EARLIER...

There’s a weird-oh in every neighborhood.

The old lady with 49 cats.  The man who’s formed art pieces out of painted car parts and littered them across his front yard.  The couple who’ve carved mysterious symbols in the bark of a tree and hung a plaque on the limbs declaring themselves lovers of evergreens, while fir needles blanket their dilapidated roof and hang in a shroud of spider webs from the sagging eaves.

I fear that Dwayne Durbin is becoming the latest neighborhood weird-oh.

Ever since the accident that broke his leg and somewhat incapacitated him, he’s taken to spying on the properties across Lakewood Bay, his leg wrapped in a cast from ankle to thigh, his eyes glued to a pair of binoculars.  A strange chortling sound issues from his throat.  He can tell you more about the Pilarmo’s dog and the Wilson’s new alarm system than you should ever want to know.

I’ve sort of been trying to avoid him these last few weeks.  He’s drawn me into watching the sexcapades of a nameless couple whose energetic and inventive forms of copulation both impress and shock me, which is saying a lot.  Dwayne has named all the houses/families he spies on; these two he calls Tab A and Slot B.  Their stamina and vitality while inserting said Tab A into Slot B makes me wonder about my own tepid sex life.  A few random kisses is all I can measure in the plus column.

Which is the main reason I’ve been avoiding Dwayne: my newly refined awareness of him.  Yes, he’s an attractive member of the male gender, but so what?  Dwayne is still my boss/business partner and that is IT.  Thinking about him in any romantic context is just plain trouble.