The Voyeur's Motel Read online

  Jake Foos had been such a fine semipro baseball player in the early 1930s that a major league scout had expressed interest in signing him to a contract. Gerald had been told this by his mother, Natalie, who used to watch Jake play shortstop (Honus Wagner’s position) for her hometown team, the Windsor Merchants, located in a wheat farming district in northern Colorado not far from Ault.

  The Windsor Merchants were excellent, Natalie said, talented enough to have once defeated Leroy “Satchel” Paige’s African American barnstorming group that visited Windsor during the summer of 1934. Days earlier, Satchel Paige had been the winning pitcher at an annual tournament in Denver sponsored by the Denver Post, one that featured semipro and independent professional teams from around the nation and was including black players for the first time—this being thirteen years before Jackie Robinson would be admitted into the major leagues by the Brooklyn Dodgers, in 1947. (A year later, Satchel Paige came to the majors via the Cleveland Indians, at the age of forty-two.)

  But Jake Foos (who, according to Natalie, singled twice against Paige during the exhibition game in Windsor) never aspired to being in the major leagues. In 1934 he had just gotten married and was about to have his first son; and, as Gerald described in his writing:

  On the farm, Dad seemed happy just getting up early in the morning to be outdoors . . . In early spring we planted oats, wheat, corn, beets and beans, and milked the cows . . . At home, however, things weren’t always peaceful. My Dad was a wonderful man and provider—until he drank. I knew the moment the ice cubes went into the glass, he would become a different person, an angry drunk. It was confusing to me, because sober he was very lovable. I didn’t understand that Dad was an alcoholic, but just about everyone’s father was in our part of the country, and that was especially true of Aunt Katheryn’s husband, my uncle Charley.

  During one of Gerald Foos’s furloughs while in the Navy, the USS Worcester remained at port in New York for a few days prior to leaving for Panama. After buying a ticket to a game at Yankee Stadium, Foos sat in the front row of the bleachers and had a close view of Mickey Mantle’s back while the latter was standing in center field. Although Mantle hit a home run that day, Gerald was most impressed with Mantle’s speed and agility while covering the outfield.

  I watched Mickey Mantle take off after a long fly ball in the vast plain of centerfield, and I thought he wasn’t going to catch it. I thought he wasn’t running fast enough. He just seemed to be gliding easily beneath a speeding white speck, which he had detected before I heard the crack of the bat, and before I understood why Mantle was moving. And just as I was about to go insane worrying that Mantle wouldn’t catch it, he let the ball sink into his glove as if he had known all along that his glove was the only place the ball wanted to go.

  In later years, Foos would collect many items relating to Mantle: vintage baseball cards, signed baseballs, a signed Louis­ville Slugger bat.

  Years after being discharged, and many months after building the viewing platform in his attic, Gerald Foos felt at times that he was still in the Navy, adrift in calm waters, peering down through the louvered slats in his motel as he used to squint through his binoculars while on deck duty, directing his gaze outward for great distances without spotting anything of interest. His life in the attic was humdrum and uneventful. His motel was a dry-docked boat whose guests endlessly watched television, exchanged banalities, had sex mainly under the covers if they had sex at all, and gave him so little to write about that sometimes he wrote nothing at all.

  Ordinary life is boring, he concluded, not for the first time; no wonder there is always a big market for make ­believe: staged dramas, films, works of fiction, and also the legalized mayhem inherent in such sports as boxing, hockey, and football. Gerald wrote, “Talking about football or hockey, if the players were armed with knives and guns, there would not be stadiums large enough to hold the crowds.”

  Gerald often witnessed examples of his guests’ dishonesty, their admissions of double-dealing in their businesses, and their willingness to compromise their principles if it was financially profitable. They sometimes tried to cheat him out of the room rent, and hardly a week passed without him witnessing instances of chicanery whenever a male guest, eager for sex, entered the motel with a woman he did not know well. As described in The Voyeur’s Journal:

  Checked in this “hot sheet” white male and white female in Room 9. He was a white-collar type in his 40s, 5’10”, 175 lbs, average appearance; she was in mid-20s, 5’3”, attractive.

  After they entered the room, the male immediately began negotiating a contract for sexual pleasure. He had offered her $25 for oral sex and intercourse, but she said, “Give me $45 and I’ll give you the best blowjob you’ve ever received. I’m an expert.”

  He finally agreed, and gave her the money.

  “Take off your clothes and get comfortable,” she said. After he had taken off his clothes, she said: “I need a Coca-Cola to keep my throat clear when I’m performing. Do you have any change for the machine?”

  “I’ll get the Coke for you,” he said; but she said: “Oh, no, you’re already undressed. I’ll get it and be right back.”

  She took his change and left the room. As she was gone he began playing with his penis, attempting to get an erection. About ten minutes passed, and he was still waiting and playing with himself.

  Finally, he got up, looked through the window, and said: “Son of a bitch—that whore’s gone!”

  He put on his clothes quickly and left the motel room. I immediately came down from the observation platform to see what was happening. But I missed seeing him go, and so I went to the office.

  About fifteen minutes later, I see him heading back to Room 9. Returning to the observation platform, I see him taking off his clothes again, looking thoroughly disgusted. He now had a pornographic magazine, and was reclining on the bed, and then he began masturbating and finally ejaculated onto the centerfold photo of a nude model. He then ripped the photo out of the magazine and flushed it down the toilet.

  Conclusion: Unfortunately for him, the woman he was with was not a prostitute but merely a con artist. Prostitutes rarely, if ever, operate using these con-game tactics. I have seen many hookers operate with their clients, and they are nearly always fair, and deliver whatever has been agreed upon. He should have recognized this woman’s motive after she’d taken his forty-five bucks and then left him alone in the room with the excuse she was going out for a Coke.

  SEVENTEEN

  WRITTEN OVER so many years, Gerald’s journal not only illuminates changing social patterns as seen through the observation vents, it reflects demographic changes as well. From 1960 to 1980, Colorado’s population grew by 65 percent, over a million new residents, some of whom passed through the Manor House Motel. They were not always appreciated.

  White working-class couple in their 30s, with a U-haul trailer attached to their old sedan, arrived from Chicago and rented a room for a week. He was a 6-foot man of about 190 lbs, and she was about 5’8”, slim and of average appearance. Both were very talkative, and he in particular expressed a desire to acquire work in the area and ultimately settle here.

  I observed them from time to time during the week and they were having a terrible time finding work and housing. Their sex life was non-existent, and when he would approach her she would resist him and also say something critical. She said he was not trying hard enough to get a job.

  From time to time, he would discuss his problems with me in the office. But he would present a different attitude than the real one of desperation that I overheard from the vent. He told me that things were looking up. At the end of the week, when the room rent was due, he asked for a three-day extension, saying he was expecting a check from Chicago. I sympathized with his situation and granted his request.

  During observation the next day, I overheard the guy telling his wife: “The dumb guy in the office thin
ks I have a check coming in from Chicago, and we’ll fool him the same way we did at the motel in Omaha.”

  She was upset with him, saying he should get a job and stop taking advantage of people’s generosity.

  And so the bastard was a liar, and I decided to protect my interests and put a lock-out cover on their door knob. This device prevents a guest from getting their key to open the door. When the couple returned to their room, the guy comes rushing into the office, saying to me: “You told me we could stay until I received my check.” I replied, “I’ve decided you should make other arrangements and pay for the room now.” He said, “You know the check is coming in.” “There’s no guarantee,” I said, and I went on to tell him I would retain his belongings until he pays for the room in full.

  He angrily left. I waited for a half-hour and then changed the locks on his door and moved their belongings into our storage room.

  Conclusion: Thousands of unhappy, discontented people are moving to Colorado in order to fulfill that deep yearning in their soul, hoping to improve their way of life, and arrive here without any money and discover only despair. . . . Society has taught us to lie, steal, and cheat, and deception is the paramount prerequisite in man’s makeup. . . . As my observation of people approaches the fifth year, I am beginning to become pessimistic as to the direction our society is heading, and feel myself becoming more depressed as I determine the futility of it all.

  In fact, I have recently created an honesty test, one in which I’ve placed some of our guests in a tempting situation. The first guest I tested was a U.S. Army lieutenant colonel in his mid-50s, who was just assigned to an administrative position at the Fitzsimons Army Hospital, and for a while he stayed in our motel’s Room 10.

  Foos explained the test briefly:

  I begin by placing a small suitcase in the closet of Room 10. The suitcase is secured with a small inexpensive padlock that can easily be broken off, or pried loose, by almost any individual. Guests are always leaving behind small suitcases, and I use these for my experiment.

  Whenever a guest that I want to test for honesty arrives at the motel, I book them in Room 10. Then, while they’re filling out the registration form, I’ll have my wife Donna telephone me from our living quarters, pretending she had been a guest and had left her suitcase in the room with $1,000 deposited inside.

  “You say you left a suitcase containing $1,000?” I’ll repeat to Donna aloud on the phone, assuming that the newly-arrived guest at the desk is listening. Then I put down the phone and call back to my wife in the apartment: “Donna, did the maid turn in a small suitcase that somebody left with money inside?”

  And Donna yells back: “No, she didn’t. Nothing was found.”

  I would then pick up the phone and say to Donna on the line: “I’m sorry, sir, nothing has been found, but if it is, since we have your address, we’ll send it to you promptly.”

  On this particular day, I conducted this fictitious exchange while the Army colonel is checking in. After he had filled out the form, I assign him to Room 10, and then I go up to the observation platform to watch what he does.

  The first thing he does after entering the room is to place his luggage on the bed and he goes to the bathroom. When he comes out, he turns on the TV and quickly scouts the room. He reads the room-rate chart on the door. He opens and closes the bureau drawers. He removes his military jacket and hangs it in the closet. That’s when he sees, resting on the closet shelf, the small suitcase. He takes it down and places it on the bed. He touches its small lock but doesn’t try to open it. Like all the other guests in this situation, he momentarily ponders the situation.

  This is the moment that I love to witness. The moment of truth or dishonesty is flashing through the person’s mind. There is the question: Should I break open the lock and take the $1,000? Or should I be a Good Samaritan and turn it into the office? You can almost hear each person thinking to themselves: Nobody knows this suitcase is in this room, and there’s $1,000 inside, and Lord knows I can use the money.

  This particular Army colonel took ten minutes in coming to a decision. Finally, evil ultimately triumphed. He tried to twist off the lock with his fingers, but was unsuccessful. He departed the room, carefully closing the door, and returned with a screwdriver from his car. When he returned he was hesitant to use it. He left the room again and wandered into the office, where Donna saw him and said hello. He idled there for a few moments, as if considering whether anybody was on to the fact that he’d found the suitcase.

  Then he returned to Room 10. He chain-locked the door, sat on the bed, and, with one motion with the screwdriver, he snapped open the suitcase. He began shuffling through the clothes packed in there, searching every crevice and every pocket. Suddenly, it dawned on him that there was no money in the suitcase, only clothing. He shook his head, indicating confusion and concern. Now what? He was probably thinking: I can’t carry this suitcase to the office with the lock broken, and I can’t just leave it in the room, either.

  After another few minutes of pacing the room, the colonel reached for his raincoat, wrapped it around the suitcase, and departed from Room 10. I heard him start up his car, and then he apparently drove away to find a place where he could dispose of the suitcase.

  The Voyeur in the observation tower reached for his notebook and recorded another example of a motel guest’s greed.

  Conclusion: After subjecting fifteen registered guests to this test—a number that included a minister, a lawyer, a few businessmen, a couple of working people, a vacationing couple, a middle-class married woman, and one man who was unemployed—only two of the entire list returned the suitcase to the office unopened. One was a doctor. The other was the middle-class married woman. The minister and the others all opened the suitcase and then tried to dispose of it in different ways. The minister pushed the suitcase out of the bathroom window and tossed it into the hedges. The doctor, in fact, made an attempt to open it, but then changed his mind. And so of the fifteen test cases, only the woman was not tempted by greed.

  The Voyeur rests his case.

  EIGHTEEN

  IN THE Voyeur’s category of “honest, but unhappy people,” a great majority of his subjects were out-of-town married couples who, during their brief stay at the Manor House Motel, so filled his ears with their complaints or indications of long-term marital stress that he constantly reminded himself of how lucky he was to have Donna as a wife.

  “Without her understanding and unprejudiced attitude, my observation laboratory would never have become a reality. My wife,” Gerald wrote, made “every effort to understand the motivations behind” his voyeurism. She “has not criticized or condemned me for this perversion. Thus has she helped rationalize my conviction that voyeurism is a natural state of being, and this desire is present in all men.”

  In her pretty and perky blonde embodiment he had an adoring and faithful spouse, an in-house nurse, a coconspirator with regard to his prying propensities, a prurient presence in the attic when she was off duty from the hospital, a trustworthy manager of their family finances, a loving mother to their two children, and, also worthy of mention, his private secretary and scribe whenever he was too tired or bored to put on paper some of the tedious scenes and situations he witnessed through the slats.

  When he wished to avoid taking pencil in hand, he would dictate his observations to Donna, who knew shorthand (having learned it in high school), and soon she would supply him with a transcript that he would later copy in his own hand and include in The Voyeur’s Journal.

  Donna also assisted him in compiling the facts and percentage figures that he posted in his annual report, bringing to this task the same high standards in accuracy that she maintained when jotting down medical data at her hospital.

  Since Gerald Foos was frequently carried away by fantasies of his significant scientific status, imagining Donna and himself as white-coated colleagues of the renowned c
ouple that ran the Masters & Johnson Institute in St. Louis, his written report often conveyed the professional tone of a sexual therapist or marriage counselor, particularly in the final sentences that formed his “Conclusion.” A typical “Conclusion” appeared at the bottom of what he wrote about a romantically disengaged older couple from Joplin, Missouri, who chose to stay in Room 7, one with two double beds.

  Since I did not have anything better to do, I decided to observe this unattractive couple. Upon check-in, I noticed that the husband didn’t show any emotion. He was an auto factory manager in his mid-40s, 5’8”, well-groomed, wore glasses. His wife was also in her mid-40s, slender at 105 lbs, and she had a small mouth. As they entered the room, I noticed that the husband had the same grim expression he had in the office. She went first to the bathroom, then came out and said: “Let’s go to dinner.”

  They came back at 9:30 and discussed a movie they had seen, and she proceeded to undress, taking off her bra by pulling the back around to the front, and then putting her nightgown on first, and then pulling the bra out from beneath. They retired to separate beds while watching TV. Much later he moved over to her bed and attempted to fondle and caress her; but when his wife became amorous it seemed to kill any prospect of his getting an erection.

  His wife said: “You haven’t been able to do anything in three weeks, so why do you continue to try doing it from this God-damned motel room?”