The Voyeur's Motel Page 7

  Of the 296 sexually active guests that Gerald Foos watched and wrote about in an annual report on 1973, 195 were heterosexual white people who generally favored intercourse in the missionary position, and less frequently accompanied it with oral sex and masturbation. But regardless of these individuals’ preferred positions or techniques in bed, the overall result produced an annual total of 184 male orgasms and thirty-three female orgasms—a figure that Foos conceded might be high, due to women’s acting talents in faking orgasms in the interest of flattering their partners, or gaining quicker relief from their partners, or a bit of both.

  In addition to the 195 heterosexual whites, the remaining seventy-four guests (within the total count of 296) were separately accounted for in Foos’s journal as follows:

  *There were twenty-six sexually active black heterosexual guests, and their preferred positions and orgasmic ratio was similar to the whites.

  *There were ten white lesbian guests, all of whom Gerald Foos observed taking turns performing cunnilingus.

  *There were seven white homosexual males exchanging oral and anal sex.

  *There were ten guests who participated in interracial sex and who also engaged in oral sex and intercourse.

  *There were fifteen registered guests (some alone, some with companions) whose sexual behavior, or asexual behavior, or aberrant behavior, or nondescript behavior was categorized within The Voyeur’s Journal as part of a miscellaneous mélange; and, as examples, he presented three vignettes.

  Vignette No. 1:

  From the observation deck, I noticed all the regular activities usually associated with an afternoon sexual romp. He is kissing her and fondling her immediately below my position over the vent. After embracing for several minutes, they open a bottle of bourbon and pour themselves a drink, which is mixed with 7UP. The conversation narrows to a point concerning a dinner they enjoyed last week at the Top of the Rockies.

  After this conversation, she excuses herself and goes to the bathroom and closes the door. Immediately he grabs her drink and takes his penis out of his pants and urinates in her drink. She came out of the bathroom and he said, “Here’s to us,” raising his glass and she obliged by taking her drink and drinking it. He was watching her carefully as she drank the urine-laden drink and he said, “This is really good bourbon, isn’t it?”

  She replied, “Yes, it is.”

  He said, “You ever tasted any better bourbon?”

  She said, “In fact, I haven’t.”

  He appeared to suddenly become very sexually aroused. Without another word, he leaned over and gave her a long, tongue-drenching kiss and she parted her lips and sucked on his tongue . . .

  Conclusion: This male subject displayed an aberration which I had not observed in the past. The subject probably would also take an interest in watching a person urinate, being urinated upon, or urinating on someone else, if given the opportunity.

  Vignette No. 2:

  During the afternoon hours, the Voyeur checked in two neatly-dressed men from Florida and they were assigned to room No. 9. The Voyeur didn’t observe the subjects during the evening because of disinterest. The next day the maid assigned to clean No. 9 came into the office and told me: “I think those two men have a sheep in there because I have heard lots of ‘baa baas’ and you should check it out.”

  The Voyeur proceeded to the observation platform and soon saw the older and heavier male sitting on the bed watching the younger male beginning to dress in a costume that appeared to be that of a goat with horns. The younger male placed the bedizenment of goat canonicals over his head like a tarpaulin. The bizarre garment was basically black in color and had a long white tail of perhaps two feet in length.

  After the younger male completed dressing in this freakish costume, he immediately jumped to the floor on his hands and knees and began crawling and running around the motel floor. While he was demonstrating this ostentatious spectacle, he was vocalizing and uttering sounds similar to the cries of a distant sheep or goat.

  The aberration continued until he had circled the motel room several times, when the rotund male subject proceeded to chase the younger male on hands and knees.

  “You are heavenly,” the rotund male said, “I have never seen a more beautiful sheep-boy.”

  Then the rotund man raised the long white tail with his hands and, with his erect penis, gouged through the young man’s buttocks while the latter called out, “baa, baa.” Later, the older man eased himself out of the younger man, and lay on top of him, holding him delicately, and then, after turning him over, began sucking his penis until orgasm . . .

  Conclusion: This condition could perhaps be classified as a perversity, but it should not be condemned because both individuals are willing participants, and therefore the Voyeur will remain nondiscriminatory in its interpretation.

  Vignette No. 3:

  Checked in this handsome male into Room 6 and thought he would probably bring in a girl later. Upon observation, he brought a suitcase into the room, opened it, and placed it on the bed. Seeing that it contained only women’s clothes, I immediately thought they probably were for a girlfriend that would visit him later.

  He removed all his clothes and, after lining all the women’s in a row on the bed, he picked up each article of clothing and gently fondled it and looked at it with great appreciation. He then appeared to attest to a sense of great pleasure and relaxation when viewing these clothes of the opposite sex, expressing a relish for the feel of the material.

  After carefully dressing in this woman’s attire, he was greatly impressed with his view in the mirror, and then sat down and applied substantial amounts of make-up to complete his cross-dressing.

  After parading around the room for several minutes, he departed the room for destinations unknown to me. I did not see him return and he probably checked out that evening when he returned.

  Conclusion: Transvestites or cross-dressing individuals have been observed on only two or three occasions. Therefore, I consider this to be a rare practice. This male was observed taking off a wedding band, and is probably married. He wanted a place to demonstrate his behavior and chose a motel where he would feel secure. This man’s cross-dressing allowed him to express the gentle, graceful, sensuous side of his nature that society does not permit him to express as a man.

  THIRTEEN

  ACCORDING TO the Voyeur’s report on 1974, which was his eighth annual summarization of what he saw and heard since he began watching people from his attic hideaway in 1966, there were 329 guests whose sexual activities he believed warranted attention and description in his journal. But much of what he saw in 1974 was similar to what he had seen in 1973, and in earlier years as well, except for two categories: oral sex among white heterosexual guests, which rose from only 12 percent to 44 percent, perhaps affected by the release of the pornographic film Deep Throat in the summer of 1972, and interracial sex.

  During the entire year of 1973, he had observed only five interracial couples having sex, whereas in 1974 this number more than doubled to twelve couples; and it doubled again, between 1975 and 1980, to an average of twenty-five couples. He added, “The most amazing statistic is the almost complete participation in oral sexual adventures by interracial couples, which is practically total for both partners.”

  What was also a sign of change, beginning in the mid-1970s, was the casual manner in which interracial couples approached the front office while registering for rooms. A decade earlier, in the mid-1960s, the Voyeur noted that a white woman, for example, would never accompany her black lover while he registered. She would usually remain in the car, and join him later after he had obtained the key and occupied the room.

  But by the mid-1970s such reticence on the part of either a white or black woman was replaced by the sight of couples standing together at the registration desk—which the Voyeur saw as one of many examples in which his small motel re
flected the changing social trends and evolving attitudes that were spreading through the nation.

  And, on a strictly personal note, the Voyeur acknowledged that he found watching interracial sex to be especially stimulating, and on one occasion it was the source of his most “explosive orgasm.”

  On the observation platform, on this autumn evening in 1976, the Voyeur is masturbating while watching a white woman almost choking because the black penis in her mouth is too large for her to contain. But she continues to give her partner fellatio, sucking his penis on one side and then the other, and suddenly, as he begins to come, she removes her mouth—and then she watches as this black man’s sperm begins shooting up in the air about three or four feet toward the observation vent. At the same time, the Voyeur in the attic is also having an orgasm, right in tandem with the black man. The Voyeur propels a strong first spasm of sperm right onto the vent, and then it begins to drip downward to the foot of the bed below.

  The woman, still grasping the end of the bed, sees evidence of sperm spotting the bed cover. Then she looks up to see more sperm dripping from the vent, and she says to her partner: “My gosh, you shot your come right across the bed and up to the heating vent!” She raised herself on the bed and wiped her finger across the vent. She then placed her fingers in her mouth. “Yes,” she said, “this tastes like your come.”

  And the Voyeur watched quietly as she proceeded to sample his sperm.

  As a footnote to this incident, the Voyeur asked in his journal, “Will anybody believe that this actually happened?”

  If I had not seen the observation platform with my own eyes, I would have found it hard to believe Foos’s entire account. Indeed, over the decades since we met, in 1980, I had noticed various inconsistencies in his story: for instance, the first entries in his Voyeur’s Journal are dated 1966, but the deed of sale for the Manor House, which I obtained recently from the Arapahoe County Clerk and Recorder’s Office, shows that he purchased the place in 1969. And there are other dates in his notes and journals that don’t quite scan. I have no doubt that Foos was an epic voyeur, but he could sometimes be an inaccurate and unreliable narrator. I cannot vouch for every detail that he recounts in his manuscript.

  By necessity, Foos existed in the shadows, doing so successfully for many years, a success he felt was worthy of note—while, at the same time, he had created a unique laboratory for the study of secret human behavior, for which he also believed he deserved some credit. As he saw it, he was not some lurid “Peeping Tom” but rather a pioneering researcher whose efforts were comparable to those of the renowned sexologists at the Kinsey Institute and the Masters & Johnson Institute. Much of the research and record-keeping at these places was obtained while observing volunteer participants, whereas his subjects never knew they were being watched and therefore he saw his findings as more representative of unconscious and unadulterated realism.

  Gerald was not purely a removed observer, however. “In order to discover what individuals will do if provided with the proper sexual stimulation,” the Voyeur planted “sexual paraphernalia and hard-core pornography in their rooms.”

  The Voyeur purchased fifty dildos and several hard-core pornographic magazines as an experiment. I would conceal one dildo and one pornographic magazine in a room, usually in the drawer of a nightstand, and then wait for an unsuspecting subject, and place her, or him, or a couple in that room, depending on what type of information was desired from the subject.

  During this period of observation, the Voyeur didn’t have any of the individuals complain or return any of the planted sexual paraphernalia. Fifty percent of the women utilized the dildo or magazines, the other fifty percent either ignored the devices or discarded them.

  One of those 50 percent who utilized the planted materials was a nun.

  In his journal, Gerald wrote that his experimentation and observation had a higher purpose.

  “The only way that our society is going to achieve proper sexual stability and mental health, which are undisputed requirements for maturity, is to know the truth of what people are actually doing in the privacy of their own bedrooms. We must educate people with the truth, not indoctrinate; teach facts, not fallacies; formulate a code that accepts all sexual practices, not preaches asceticism.”

  While it was true that Donna was fully aware of his activities, and on occasion joined him in the attic as a second witness and sexual partner, he nevertheless felt a need for wider recognition. He admitted as much in his writing, which during the mid-1970s began to reflect, not only what he saw and felt while watching other people, but also how he saw and felt about himself, beginning with his origins as a farm boy whose infatuation with his beautiful aunt Katheryn led him into a lifetime of voyeurism.

  In his written account, he described how he used to sneak out of his bedroom at night and slowly make his way along a dirt road to crouch below her lighted window in anticipation of seeing her nude. Describing himself in the third person, as he did in much of his writing:

  The youth moved silently through the night over the grass and across the barbed wire fence . . . her shutters folded back, unsuspecting, letting the northwest breeze play through the arrangement of the bedroom. The youth looked in, forgot about the cold and rain outside, forgot about essence, forgot about time. While observing his aunt she began to move toward her collectables, which were small miniature dolls and thimbles which were encased in a wooden receptacle on her wall. My aunt was naked as she moved toward her collections very cautiously, and began to handle the thimbles prudently and discreetly. Her actions in handling the thimbles and miniature dolls were accomplished in a cavalier manner, bringing them close to her naked breasts in a sort of sexual ritual not understood by the observing youth.

  He also could not understand why his aunt Katheryn was so different from his modest mother and the rest of the family, in neglecting to wear a robe or nightgown while walking around in her bedroom with the shutters folded back. But he could no more ask questions about this than he could explain his own behavior and the punishment he risked should his prowling become known to his aunt or another family member who happened to see him near her window at night.

  The closest he came to admitting his special interest in her occurred one day when he confessed to his mother, prior to his tenth birthday, that he was envious of his aunt’s thimble and doll collection and wanted a collection of his own. (He had already stolen one of his aunt’s thimbles while she was away on a short vacation, but he returned it in time to avoid being reprimanded).

  “Well, you can’t collect dolls,” his mother said, “but why don’t you begin collecting sports cards?” She added, “When I’m at Gambles Hardware, I’ll buy you a couple of packs.”

  This started him off on a lifelong hobby with sports cards, one in which he would amass more than two million examples by the time I met him in 1980, when he was forty-six, and in his fifteenth year at the Manor House Motel. But his collecting was always associated with his boyhood attraction to his aunt Katheryn, as he explained in his notes.

  The youth will confuse sexuality and the art of accumulating objects . . . there was a direct association from his aunt being nude and [his] collecting. Because his tenth birthday was days away, he vowed to begin a collecting routine almost immediately in order to imitate the actions of his aunt.

  But even before he was ten, his aunt’s presence induced early signs of his foot fetish that he later imposed on his high school girlfriend, Barbara White, leading to the couple’s breakup. “My aunt would come over for coffee in the morning to see my mom. I was six or so, under the table, looking at my aunt Katheryn’s feet. She wore open-toed shoes. I wanted to touch her toes.”

  In addition to collecting cards—in later years he would also collect stamps, coins, and vintage firearms—he had a boyhood interest in muskrat tails.

  I collected muskrat tails to determine which was the longest or the shortest.
This endeavor was abundantly available to me, because my father was a trapper of muskrats to supplement the family income in the winter months. I was delegated the duty to feed the skinned muskrats to the hogs, and that is when I noticed that muskrats did not have an even length of tails. After a few weeks, I would tire of one particular length and shape, and then after collecting the tail of choice, I would begin the process again, keeping the other tails in a can. I did this unscrupulously and finally my parents objected to the special odor in my room, and I was forbidden to collect muskrat tails. My sports card collecting, however, by comparison was a reasonable and respectable thing to be collecting. Without distinct knowledge, I was following a pattern laid down over time, which was the natural, predictable and aesthetically correct way of accumulating anything interesting.

  While his habit of masturbating introduced him for the first time to physical pleasure, it was also accompanied by so much guilt that he sought moral guidance from a priest. “I went to an old and very strict priest for confession, and I asked him about it. To my surprise, he said it was not a sin. He said that every man and woman probably masturbated. He was not liberal in his beliefs, but he was compassionate toward me.”

  Gerald was also pleased to learn from an older classmate that no physical harm would result from the act of masturbating, and furthermore was told not to worry if he ever ejaculated a profusion of seminal fluid. “This older male confirmed to me that it was proper, it was OK—and that after I could shoot nine big drops, I’d be a man. Wow! I kept counting the volume and drops after receiving that advice, and finally it materialized.”

  FOURTEEN

  GERALD WAS the first of two children born to Natalie and Jake Foos. Gerald was five years older than his brother, Jack, and while they were similarly reared, attended the same schools, and bore a physical resemblance—dark hair, dark eyes, pale coloring, big-boned, and tall—their difference in age and personality contributed to their not knowing one another very well. They had neither a rivalry nor a fraternal bond. In school they were never classmates, teammates, or confidants. Quietly, they went their own way. It was as if each were an only child.