The Sand Fly

Marzee Banks is a peeping Tom.Scantily clad college girls sunning on the beach, and spying through unsuspecting lovers' windows at night-these pursuits possess him. Marzee Banks is a bright African-American college student, striving to escape what he considers the hum-drum of lower middle-class blackness in Southern California. Yet he fights the battle with futility, with his voyeuristic demon gnawing and gnashing at him constantly. Almost caught while cruising a student apartment complex, he is referred to counseling by his psychology professor who witnessed him running away. While in therapy, he attempts to explore the origins of his inner demons, only to be diverted by them instead. Uncontrollable lust obsesses him when he first encounters his philosophy instructor, a ravishing mid-thirties German woman named Utte Thorndike. Smitten by her beauty and mystique, he stalks her. Discovering her address on the Internet, he visits her neighborhood, peeps through her bedroom window at night, and finally enters her house when it is vacant. What he discovers and what he hears while hiding frantically in a broom closet throws his already chaotic life into a frenzy. Loss, abandonment, grief, and trust-all rush in to replace his obsessions as he races to protect that from which he yearned to escape.