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Voyeurs
To the voyeur, a category
that includes mostly everyone in the City,
the roof is special. I once went to a rooftop dinner party in a
tall building that faced another tall building across a wide avenue.
After dinner, and an appropriate amount of time spent talking about
our careers, we sat down in a row of chairs, like on the deck of a ship.
As it got dark, the host appeared with binoculars which he passed
up and down the row in a manner that indicated to me that he had
done this before.
I suddenly recalled an experience
I'd had when I was just out of college.
Staying at the apartment of a friend, one morning as we were getting
dressed, I noticed a man on the facing roof looking toward us. I called
to
my friend, who amazed me by saying, "He's probably just walking his
dog." I don't know why that seemed like a reasonable answer.