Professor Marcus went on, “We must grant a certain degree of validity to this assertion, reminding ourselves that in the nineteenth century the novel served just such a function.”
During the rest of my visit to Aurora, I accompanied Foos into the attic observatory a number of additional times. As I looked through the slats, I saw mostly unhappy people watching television, complaining about minor physical ailments to one another, making unhappy references to the jobs they had, and constant complaints about money and the lack of it, the usual stuff that people say every day to one another, if they’re married or otherwise in cohabitation, but is never reported upon or thought about much beyond the one-on-one relationship. To me, without the Voyeur’s charged anticipation of erotic activity, it was tedium without end, the kind acted out in a motel room by normal couples every day of the year, for eternity.
When I left Denver to return home, I didn’t think I’d ever see the Voyeur again, and certainly had no hope of writing about him. I knew that what he was doing was very illegal (I also wondered how legal my behavior was in doing the same thing under his roof), and I insisted I would not write about him without using his name. He knew this was impossible. We both agreed it was impossible. So I returned to New York. I had a big book to promote.
FIVE
A WEEK after I had returned home to New York, I received from Gerald Foos the opening twenty pages of The Voyeur’s Journal, which begins in 1965.
“Today was the fulfillment and realization of a dream that has constantly occupied my mind and being. Today, I purchased the Manor House Motel, and that dream has been consummated. Finally, I will be able to satisfy my constant yearning and uncontrollable desire to peer into other people’s lives. My voyeuristic urges will now be placed into effect on a plane higher than anyone else has contemplated. My contemporaries would only dream of accomplishing what I am actually going to do with the facilities of the Manor House Motel.”
However, it took him several months, and much frustration, before he was able to convert his attic into a viewing platform. From The Voyeur’s Journal:
Nov. 18, 1966—Business has been great and I am missing observing several interesting guests, but patience has always been my watchword, and I must accomplish this task with the utmost of perfection and brilliance. The fabricating shop will have an experimental vent finished according to my specifications tomorrow. I am looking forward with great anticipation and hoping it will function properly and fit my needs.
Nov. 19, 1966—The vent doesn’t work! I cut a hole in the ceiling of #6 and placed the vent in the hole and my wife, Donna, sometimes could be seen from the observation station on top. I must take the vent back and have smaller slats cut in the front and bent at a strategically engineered angle to deflect light.
Nov. 20, 1966—The sheet metal fabricating shop thinks I am building some special heat-deflecting vent. Ha!! These simple-minded 40-hour-week wonders wouldn’t have the intelligence to determine what I was doing if it was revealed to them. This is costing me money rebuilding this vent, but I must have it at any cost.
Nov. 21, 1966—These idiots working for this sheet metal shop are dumb as radishes. They never think on a level higher than cigarettes or beer. “This vent will never function properly,” they say. If I told them what purpose it was going to serve they probably wouldn’t comprehend.
Nov. 22, 1966—I installed the vent in #6, and after several failures in fabrication, this one works perfectly and I finally have one room to be used as my personal observation laboratory. My wife, Donna, peered down the vent from the top, and I could not see her below, regardless of how close she approached the vent with her face. We checked the vent at night with the lights on and off and she could not be seen. Wonderful, I had finally developed the most appropriate method of observing guests who occupy the room without their ever being aware of the situation . . . I will have the finest laboratory in the world for observing people in their natural state, and then begin determining for myself exactly what goes on behind closed bedroom doors, both procedure and behavior.
Nov. 23, 1966—The work is exhausting! I am busy building a walkway approximately 3 feet wide down the center of the attic of The Manor House Motel . . . We will carpet the walkway to facilitate walking and crawling. Additionally, we will build the walkway wider at each vent to accommodate two persons to observe at the same time, and it will also enable exchange of quiet reserved conversation between the observers.
Nov. 24, 1966—The observation laboratory is completed and ready to be rented to a wide range of guests. My anticipation is nearing realization, and my voyeuristic tendencies and overwhelming interest in the conduct of different people’s lives is about to be satisfied and materialize.
Later the same day: