The Man Who Stares

My neighborhood is not a quiet one. I live on a main thoroughfare, just on the boarder of hipster-land, about to topple into "keep-your-gentrification-to-yourself" borough. My neighbors are friendly, there are urban dogs who have likely never seen a patch of grass spanning more than a block in their lives that I know by name. My landlord stops by regularly to check on the units. He has a warm smile and a lazy eye. The woman who lives upstairs is a story for another time.

I'm a stoop kid. I love a good stoop, and mine is pretty excellent. During the Summer I've spent long hours sipping yuenglings and passing the evening invested in the neighborhood bustle and how it evolves. People running the last of their errands in the late afternoon phasing into people  jogging into dusk, transferring over to squeals of laughter as small groups stagger home drunk.

I don't remember the first time I noticed him. Directly across the street from my safe and warm stoop, a hulking man. At least six foot five. Standing, his frame nearly taking up the entire front picture window of the brick building across the street, just looking out. Staring with his whole body. It was dark enough out and there was just barely enough light in the apartment he was looking from that he was just a silhouette. He could have easily been one of those life-sized cardboard cutouts people get at party stores of James Dean or Elvis or Jean Luc Picard. But he was not. No facial features, no color, arms at his sides and with a massiveness that was enrapturing and a stoic, breath-taking stillness.

At first I thought he was waiting for someone to come home. He had a sort of "waiting for his daughter to come home from a first date" look about him. But no one came. And he didn't move. He stood motionless for about fifteen minutes and because he was just a silhouette, he could have easily been staring directly at me. Or not. Or maybe.

This was months ago, when I first moved into this place. I still see him. Very frequently. He stands in his giant picture window at the level of the street and stares out of it, blinds open. Still. Watching. It's a beautiful image, though still disconcerting. I've yet to wave at him and I don't think I will, though I know he knows I see him. I've yet to see him outside of his house.

I try to fathom what he's up to. What he's looking for or at or to. Is he nervous? Waiting for someone who will never come home again? Protective? Curious? Angry? Paranoid? Appreciative?

I've come to taking a great amount of comfort in looking up and seeing him there. A watchdog of sorts. There's a good chance his brain works differently. Maybe in a way that isn't so okay with the outside world. A way that allows him to stare, intently, motionless at a window presenting unchanging scenery for an extended period of time. His consistency has become part of my scenery, part of my expectation, part of the stories I watch unfold in an evening.

I've come to be thrilled by most things I see that are not ultimately pedestrian. The Man Who Stares is no exception. Often I imagine we stare at each other and weave the most passionate and incredible stories about each other. I know I do. I at my stoop and he at his window. Never the two shall meet, so long as the street parts us.