At about 4 p.m., after Donna had left for her nursing job, I went to the watchtower to observe this lady’s activity.
Upon entering the room, she immediately turned on the television and departed for the bathroom to engage in noisy urination. She was a side-saddle sitter—in other words, sitting on the toilet sideways, or obliquely, in contrast to normal facing-the-front sitters.
Individuals vary in their approach to the toilet seat. Some sit with their backs against the water closet. Some lean forward. Some so far forward, that I have seen at least one individual fall on his face in the midst of having a bowel movement. The strangest approach was an individual who always sat facing the water closet with his legs straddling the commode. He was able to rest his arms on the water closet from that position. Several individuals have been observed to never sit down on the toilet, just assumed a sort of squatting position over the commode, possibly in order not to acquire any germs. Every imaginable position or approach to the commode has been observed.
After leaving the bathroom, the female subject undressed and exposed a beautiful body to the delighted eyes of the obsessive Voyeur. For the next hour and a half, this young female primped, adorned, arranged, and carefully dressed her hair, and was so finicky in her styling she could never quite get it correct. For the longest time, she took off and reinstalled a set of earrings and continued looking in admiration or condemnation at her image in the mirror.
Suddenly, she would smile at herself, and then appear disgusted at her appearance.
Finally, her husband joined her in the motel room, having come from his reserve meeting. They embraced and after discussing his reserve meeting, she became disturbed that he didn’t notice her new earrings, and that she had gotten her ears pierced. During these disagreeable moments he accused her of unnecessarily spending money for getting her ears pierced and buying the earrings. She became upset and explained that this was one of the reasons why she accompanied him to Denver, to get her ears pierced and buy the earrings. They soon left for dinner, and after returning they appeared to have rectified their earlier disagreement. They turned on the TV, and she undressed quickly while he went to the bathroom. She pulled the straps of her bra down over her shoulders, and then placed a long thick nightgown over her head and pulled the bra out from underneath. She got in bed and pulled the covers up to her chin.
He came back and turned out all the lights and the TV, but left the bathroom door ajar, in which the light remained on. This afforded the opportunity to at least record some observation of this unhappy couple. After penetrating her without any foreplay or sufficient lubrication, he set the sex act in motion with vigorous thrusting and pulled the covers up to his neck so that no one could see his movements. She started complaining that he was hurting her, but he said, “You always say it hurts,” and he continued his thrusting until his orgasm resulted in approximately five minutes. She got no satisfaction whatsoever. Soon she was again complaining about him not noticing or approving of her earrings.
Conclusion: This is real life. These are real people! I’m thoroughly disgusted that I alone must bear the burden of my observations. These subjects will never find happiness and divorce is inevitable. He doesn’t know the first thing about sex or its application. The only thing he knows is penetration and thrusting, to orgasm, under the covers with the lights out.
My voyeurism has contributed immensely to my becoming a futilitarian, and I hate this conditioning of my soul. What is so distasteful is that the majority of subjects are in concert with these individuals in both design and plan. Many different approaches to life would be immediately implemented, if our society would have the opportunity to be Voyeur for a Day.
NINE
AS GERALD Foos reflected on his “burden” as a committed voyeur, one who spent endless hours in solitude, linked primarily to the world below through the holes in his ceiling, he saw himself as an entrapped figure. He had no control over what he saw nor escape from its influence. His mood swings varied from day to day, hour to hour, guided by his guests.
Whether emotionally moved by the sight of a paralyzed veteran seeking sexual pleasure, or repulsed while watching the sidesaddle lady in bed with her boorish husband, Foos’s words in his journal increasingly expressed feelings of dissatisfaction with his prolonged idling in the attic.
As I continued to read sections from his work ranging from the late 1960s into the mid-1970s, he appeared to be distancing himself from himself, changing from a first-person to a third-person narrator. Sometimes he referred to himself as “the Voyeur and Gerald,” and at other times just “the Voyeur.”