The issue is that I’m always aware when it’s possible for people to watch me, like, for example, before I had curtains and blinds installed in my house back in February, 2020. I lived in the house for around three weeks before my window coverings were installed, and said at the time:
After I moved in, I spent every night sitting in the dark because anyone passing the house at night could see in (I had sheets over my bedroom windows).Decades earlier, my last apartment in Chicago was what they euphemistically called a “garden apartment”, though it was really a sort of a basement—half underground. Being close to Halsted Street, the main road of the “Boystown” area of Lakeview, people walked past the building at all hours, and since the front windows faced the street, people could look in. I can’t remember if the place had Venetian blinds when we moved in or if we put them in, but either way they provided a way to block people from looking in.
Similarly, there was a tiny backyard behind the building, but I only remember sitting in it once. I noticed all the taller buildings facing the yard and, as the saying goes, looking down on it. I hated that exposed feeling, something I called “being on display”.
Fast forward back to nearly the present day, and I was watching an episode of the UK TV show “Location, Location, Location”. In that episode, co-host Phil Spencer was helping a lesbian couple find a home (the fact they’re lesbians isn’t relevant, but it gives me a chance to add that every time I see an LGBT couple on one of those shows, it makes me irrationally happy). The couple wanted a place that was safe for their furbabies, and that also had a garden (a “yard” in Americanese).
In one scene, Phil was showing them the garden of a city property that, like my last Chicago apartment, had other buildings looking down onto it. One of the women said to Phil that it wasn’t that she thought anyone was watching, it was that they could watch. “Exactly!”, I said to the TV, which, oddly, took no notice.
I don’t know why the possibility of being watched bothers me when it clearly doesn’t bother some people at all—and that included Nigel (if I had a dollar for every time someone said to me, “I don’t care if they look” I’d have enough money for a nice coffee somewhere). I do know that I’ve always been self-conscious about being identified as gay out of concern for my personal safety (I’m definitely a product of my times), but that’s actually more of an “and also…” kind of thing: Basically, I’m just a very private person and I want to keep it that way.
So, when the house next to me was finished, it added to an existing problem with a house further up the street. The house up the street is uphill-ish from my place, and it has a balcony facing the street for some reason (to me, it seems like an oddly exposed place for a balcony, with it on a house on a corner and facing an intersection). From my house, I’ve seen people from that house working in their yard, and, once, on that balcony.
The house next door is a bit different. It’s set back further from the street than mine is, so anyone walking out their front door toward their driveway is directly facing my stacker doors at the street-end of my lounge. That house, which is on land a good metre higher than mine, also has bedroom windows that face my house. I frequently see people coming and going, and sometimes lights on in the windows.
All of my windows face the neighbours, but I have window coverings for all my windows; it’s the stacker doors that were the issue.
Because the front of my lounge is where the TV is, and my back is to the stacker doors when I’m sitting in my chair, I seldom opened the curtains on those stacker doors. I simply felt “on display”. Then, I came up with a solution.
Earlier this month, I hung some net curtains (what Americans usually call “sheers”) along the entire three metre width of both sets of doors (before and after photos of the front-most doors are above). That way, I can open the curtains in the morning and no one can see into my house. In the afternoon, when the sun is shining on them, it’s nearly impossible to see inside my house; however, in summer, that same sunshine is extremely hot, and it heats up my house (the net curtains do help filter the sunlight, though), so I often close the curtains again at that point. In the winter, this same same afternoon reality will be a good thing.
I got the curtains from a fabric store and hung them myself (with minimal swearing). I have two hooks in the middle to keep the tension-wire from sagging. But, I can unhook the wire if I want to open the stacker doors (so the nets don’t billow out the doors).
This was the best solution for the problem, one, though, I may no longer need once I get bushes planted and they grow up above the height of the fence, which will take around three years. If I decide I like having nets, I can have better ones professionally installed later on, when it’s time to replace what I put in.
At first, I didn’t want to tell anyone I did this. I thought to myself, “this is the most nana-ish thing I’ve done to this house,” because net curtains are stereotypically associated with grandmothers. It was also because of people who think I “shouldn’t worry about it”. They’re not me, though, and I came up with the best solution available for me to do what I needed done.
I get that not everyone feels discomfort about the possibility that someone could be watching their daily life, but this isn’t about those people. The thing they also don’t get, though, is that it’s also not actually about anyone who might be looking in—chances are good that no one is. Instead, this is about me, about being able to feel at peace in my own home, to keep my home the cocoon of safety and comfort that everyone deserves their home to be.
I’m very happy with my decision, but I do need to keep reminding myself to open the curtains at the front end of the house (I’ve always opened the other ones): After leaving those front-end curtains closed most of the time for so long, I often forget to open them. That’ll change, though: My cocoon is properly set up now.
The photos above were taken roughly 20 minutes apart, so the before and after demonstrates pretty well how the nets diffuse the late afternoon sun (earlier in the afternoon it's more intense). I have no idea why Leo wasn't interested in being in the "after" photo. Probably bored with it by then. The hooks I mentioned are where the two uprights are visible (the two on the right are doors, and they slide to the left and are stacked in from of the window panel).
2 comments:
I lived in a "garden apartment" in Albany for a couple of years in the 1980s. Yeah, I suppose they could see me. But I also could see THEM. Or at least the lower half of them.
My wife is WAY more concerned about people looking in. My sense is that they'd need 2/10 vision to see anything that interesting.
I think it’s interesting how people react so differently to the same basic situation. In this case, I’ve just decided to allow me to be me.
That “garden apartment” in Chicago was about two metres back from the footpath, and the window was relatively high, so we got a full view of passersby. They, however, didn’t usually get the same opportunity.
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