I wanted to watch "It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" that night. Joe refused. He wouldn't sit through it, and he wouldn't let me sit through it happily, and so we didn't watch. What I'm saying is I could have watched, and I chose not to, because Joe would have ruined it. So I'm saying that what happened is partially my fault, but not really. It's Joe's fault.

So at 7, when I could have been inside, not enjoying the program, I was instead outside, not enjoying anything. We used the courtyard grill to burn hotdogs, soydogs and vegetable kabobs. We tossed a Nerf ball around.

Henry and Gretchen, our creepy, too-Caucasian neighbors, had left for the weekend and hadn't returned yet, and so we had to entertain ourselves Friday night, Saturday, Sunday, Monday. We were running out of things to do. We had lately become used to hiding in the dark outside their window, and watching their near-nightly window sex.

What had we done at night before they moved in? We couldn't remember, but those days seemed dull and far away and simple and probably much better than this. Eating burned barbecue and tossing a Nerf ball was unsatisfying; had it always been so unsatisfying?

I'd become a dirty pervert addicted to the window sex of my ugly neighbor and his gorgeous lover, who may be his sister.

By 7:30 we were hopelessly bored and had started bickering with one another. I wanted to go inside and induce stoned sleep. Joe wanted to go to a bar and find a good time. I wanted to at least smoke a cigarette and watch TV. Joe wanted to break into Henry and Gretchen's apartment.

We agreed to break into Henry and Gretchen's. Joe was sure they'd have tapes of themselves or something. "Tapes!" - it was something we'd never considered before. "We should have made tapes!" I said. But stealing theirs would be just as good, if not better than having tapes of our own. The image quality would be superior filmed from the inside. I felt sick to my stomach thinking this - this greasy pervert thought - but I also knew I was right.

"There will be tapes in there," Joe said with somber conviction. I think he needed the tapes more than I did. He was taking Henry and Gretchen's absence harder than I was - grumpy, smoking too much, not eating.

Getting inside was easy. Their windows, like ours, didn't latch securely, and we were able to pull the window aside after popping the screen. It took maybe two minutes. "We should have done this days ago," I said. Joe was a machine; he didn't reply, just climbed through the window without even looking at me.

I followed.

It was dark inside their apartment. Neither of us wanted to turn on a light. We pretty much knew the setup of the living room from our nightly vigils. The rest of the apartment was a mystery.

"What do we do now?" I whispered. Joe didn't say a word. "Where do we look?" He wasn't answering me. "This is fucked," I said.

I scoured the living room for a video camera, a library of home videos, a tripod, something that would substantiate our quest. There was nothing. The TV sat on milk crates. The room was pretty bare. I no longer felt any desire to see the rest of the apartment. "We've got to go, Joe."

"This isn't fun, Joe."

"We're criminals, Joe."

"Look, there's no way they made tapes, Joe."

"Joe?"

We went out the way we came. This was our lowest moment. The moment we wouldn't speak of. It hadn't been fun; it had been dirty, and we'd done it together, and it wasn't cool. It wasn't cool.

Only later, looking back on the break-in, did I wish I'd looked around the apartment a little bit longer. I'm sure I could have found the evidence I needed to know if Henry and Gretchen were related. I craved this knowledge more than I missed their sex.

But those two never came back from their weekend vacation, and the next day two hugely muscled, tanned, white-haired movers came to clear their apartment. They left so much emptiness behind.