The Voyeurs
A trans, Hispanic couple living in a white, cis neighborhood discovers their transphobic neighbor has been watching them from a treehouse outside their bedroom window.
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Plot Summary
Omar is a trans man who is now married to Belén, a trans woman, after having divorced his former husband and transitioning. He has a son, named Jordan, who is spending this weekend upstate with Omar's friends, to give Omar and Belén a weekend alone together.
One morning, Omar and Belén find a pair of underwear in the snow outside their bedroom window. They imagine whatever voyeur left the underwear wanted them to find it, to know they were being watched.
Omar reflects on his love for Belén and how she has nursed him following his top surgery weeks ago. Omar has had post-surgical depression. They haven't had sex since the surgery. He misses sex, but it isn't the sex exactly, or intimacy—something more than that.
He recalls how Belén has helped him through his worst periods of dysphoria and how she has helped him forge an understanding of the dangerous and unforgiving world he has been confronted with since transitioning. He remembers a time on the New York subway when a man masturbated on Belén, came on her coat, then ran away, calling them slurs from the platform.
Omar goes to check the mail and finds Mr. Harris, one of their many transphobic neighbors, has locked himself out of his house in the cold. He invites Mr. Harris inside to warm up and drink coffee, and Mr. Harris reluctantly agrees. As he drinks his coffee, Mr. Harris doesn't look Omar in the eye and keeps looking at his chest and crotch in the way that Omar has become used to cis people looking, without shame. Omar remembers a time two cis girls in a sex shop stared and laughed at them. After Mr. Harris leaves, an uneasy tension sticks around. Omar worries he has wasted his precious time alone with his wife. He vents to his wife, "Even in our kitchen drinking our coffee he still wanted to know if I had a dick. It’s like it turns them on to make us feel like meat."
He recalls a night early in the relationship when, with no gay bars in town, he took Belén to a straight bar recommended by a friend. In the bathroom of the bar, a man had attempted to assault him, banging on the stall door and then masturbating against the stall door as Omar held it tightly shut and feared for his life.
In the present, Omar and Belén have sex for the first time since his top surgery. After he comes, they hear a crack from the back window. They dress and run outside to find Mr. Harris in the snow beside a broken treehouse plank, with a twisted ankle and a gash on his face. Omar offers to take him to the hospital, but he calls them perverts and refuses to let Omar touch him. He limps back to his porch, repeating: "Don't look at me."
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