by Eugene Delacroix
July 7, 2007
I do suppose that there is no escaping Lady Fate when she draws her nails. My latest visit to Eyemasters has unfortunately confirmed that I am slowly, but surely, losing my eyesight to glaucoma. And it stands to reason that with no foreseeable heir to carry on my name, I am the last Delacroix to carry on our proud family tradition: voyeurism.
Voyeurism, along with blindness, has been in the Delacroix family since 1749. My ancestor, Francois Delacroix, allegedly carved a hole into the wall of a Parisian hostel to see ladies in various stages of undress. Legend has it there's a tune written about him.
This diagnosis makes me think about all the fond memories I have, perched in tree limbs with binoculars, or with my eyes slightly above a garden hedge as an oblivious beauty softly drops her nightgown to the floor. I will sincerely miss adventures like those, whether clad in black or a gas company jumpsuit with my misleadingly-decaled cargo van parked at streetside.
Still, this is a bitter recognition. Perhaps if I had spent more of my free time pursuing social functions, I could have met that special someone who would have married me and wouldn't have minded 24-hour surveillance of our bedroom. I could have fathered a son to whom I could have given the "Book of Look," which instructs every Delacroix man in the fine art of voyeurism. It's first entries are from my great-great-grandfather, Phineas Delacroix, a New Orleans oil prospector who had a penchant for peepholes in sanatorium bath houses before syphilis and consumption turned his lungs into jambalaya.
Alas, it will not be, so I shall write its last entries. I will rage against this dying of the night, so to speak, and peep like I have never peeped before. There are so many supple breasts to see unsheathed, and so little time! Now is the time for my most humanitarian act: to give all voyeurs the treasures of my family history on the Internet.
And when the fateful day comes that I have seen my last, I will be quietly at work finding a way to invent Braille pornography.