ON MATTERS of personal hygiene, integrity, and honesty, the Voyeur gave high marks to few guests. Once he slipped a porno magazine into the table drawer of a room where a visiting minister and his wife were registered. Later, discovering the magazine while his wife was out of the room, the minister quickly masturbated to the centerfold photo and then tucked the magazine into his briefcase. He later complained to his wife about the “filthy” magazine that someone had left behind, vowing to return it to the office with his complaint—but he never did.
On another occasion, two presentable young women in their midtwenties arrived at the front desk asking Donna if they could have a look at a room prior to registering. Normally this was against motel policy, but Donna ignored it and handed them a key. As the Voyeur watched from above, the women hurriedly entered the room and rushed directly into the bathroom, both “desperate to relieve themselves” because of all the beer they’d admitted to having earlier at lunch.
While one woman sat on the toilet, the other squatted over a plastic wastebasket in front of the sink. As the second woman finished and stood up, she accidently knocked over the wastebasket with the heel of her shoe, sending an abundant amount of urine streaming along the bathroom floor and out onto the rug of the bedroom. At first, both women seemed too panic-stricken to move. But then, after mopping up some of the urine with towels, and tossing the towels under the bed, they made a quick exit, returning the key to Donna with the explanation that they would return later. Before they drove off, however, they were met by the Voyeur in the parking area, who politely but firmly invited them back to the room to resume the chore of cleaning up.
Although he was very unhappy whenever he saw male guests urinating into bathroom sinks, which men did routinely when they were a room’s single occupant, his anger was also directed at the toilet industry’s designers and manufacturers, who were apparently unable or unwilling to address the challenges men had in directing their urine stream accurately while standing in front of a standard household toilet, which is about shin high for most people and has an oval-shaped bowl measuring approximately ten-by-thirteen inches. Urinating into it becomes even more chancy in the morning, the Voyeur explained, because many men, and especially young men, get out of bed with erections.
“You cannot piss straight if you have an erection,” he explained, “and that’s why so many men prefer the sink, which is about waist-high and offers a wider target area. If I had my way, I’d design a household toilet that was more like the upright urinals you have in the men’s rooms of public buildings. There would still be a bowl in front to sit on, but in the back there would be a wide-sized toilet cover that, after you lifted it up and pushed it back in an upright position, men could piss against it and allow their urine to rebound off it and cascade down into the bowl.”
But he found it difficult to offer excuses to motel guests whose offensive habits consisted of eating fast food out of containers and then wiping their greasy fingers on the bed linen, and also pet owners who failed to fully wash away the room’s rug stains caused by their urinating and defecating dogs.
He faced a dilemma whenever a guest approached the registration desk accompanied by a dog. Should he falsely claim that there were no available rooms and therefore lose business to one of the competing motels, all of which were pet friendly? Should he instead assign them to one of his twelve rooms with vents, and then keep a close eye on their animal’s toilet manners?
The problem with his being a dog’s watchdog was that dogs often seemed to become aware that he was watching from the attic. Being very keen of hearing and sensitive to smell, dogs would frequently point their noses up toward the vents and begin to bark, causing the Voyeur, while leaning over a vent, to freeze in that position and try not to breathe. If a dog continued to bark, and indeed jumped up and down on the bed while balancing its body on its hind legs, the Voyeur would crawl backward as soundlessly as possible, hoping that his retreat would pacify the animal and encourage it to abide by the masters’ admonishments to stop making noise.