00:00As a child, I suffered from chronic insomnia.
00:03To escape the boredom of my sleepless nights,
00:05I started doing what everyone has dreamed of doing one day.
00:09I would enter the houses in our neighborhood and watch people sleep.
00:15It was back in the days when people didn't lock their doors.
00:19From the age of 7 to 12, I spied on everyone in my neighborhood.
00:25My first nighttime intrusion, I remembered it as if it were yesterday.
00:30Mrs. Plourde.
00:32She lived in the house next to ours, Mrs. Plourde, the woman with a turquoise smile.
00:39Because of her overly white teeth.
00:41Mrs. Plourde, whose power over men was envied by all the women.
00:48I discovered that Mrs. Plourde's smile was soaking in a dark blue liquid
00:53at the bottom of a glass on her nightstand.
00:58I discovered that at night, Mrs. Plourde's mouth was just a black hole where
01:03I imagined flies going in and out.
01:09From house to house, I discovered secrets that I alone knew.
01:15I knew everything about my school friends, their private lives, their confidences.
01:20I would open their desk drawers.
01:23I would read their diaries, words of love written in pink ink.
01:28If she woke up, I was daring enough to follow them inside their own home.
01:33I loved the risk that she might turn around and catch me.
01:39Nancy Cote, the detestable head of the class over whom I would lean at night to whisper,
01:45bad luck, huh?
01:48Nancy Cote, whose sleep I disturbed and whose grades I made drop in class.
01:54They were the heavy drinkers, the snackers, the medicated, the cold-natured, the flatulent,
01:58the tender ones.
02:00There were the noisy ones, the talkers, the restless ones.
02:03There were the nightmare-prone, the sleepwalkers, the violent ones.
02:06There were those who had smells, those who left in their sleep, those who cursed under their breath.
02:11They were the lovers.
02:13They did it because they had to.
02:15Those who couldn't, those who loved it.
02:17The explorers, the fickle ones.
02:28And one night, one night there was Laurier Goudray.
02:35That's it.
02:37One night there was a Laurier Goudray.
