The Voyeur's Motel

She said she would soon fly into Denver from Los Angeles, adding that when she had previously stayed at the Manor House the management picked up its guests at the airport. Although this had been a courtesy provided by a previous owner, Gerald told her that he would meet her. His viewing platform in the attic was then in its second year of operation.

At baggage claim he greeted a well-groomed brunette in her early twenties who wore a flowered cotton dress with white gloves and was traveling with a single large leather suitcase. In the car she explained that she had earned a master’s degree in education but was thinking of attending the University of Colorado Law School. She wanted to specialize in inheritance litigation, and she went on to elaborate in a clipped and lecture-like manner: “A great fortune is sure to be divided. Death will make it necessary, and surviving heirs will demand it. And distant relatives will urge their claims for a share and very often the law aids their requests. And that is where I want to make an entrance in their lives.”

Since this was Gerald’s first outside meeting with a guest prior to check-in, he was curious but reticent, wanting to behave properly while chauffeuring her toward what was certainly not proper. Forthcoming as she was about her career aspirations, he did not want to risk offending her with such personal questions as whether or not she was married, or even if she had friends in the Denver area. It was enough that he was interested in what she was saying about the law and other subjects, such as capital punishment—which she declared she opposed, and which he was pleased to tell her that he did also.

After he had pulled into the parking area, and Donna, who was then still his wife, had booked her a room, Gerald headed directly up to the attic and wrote down what he saw.

She finally slipped off her lace petticoat, then un-hooded her bra, and her breasts were unusually large, the kind that remain hidden in a tight bra and want to escape. After an hour of thinking quietly to herself while unpacking, and organizing her things, she finally lay nude on the bed and began a routine of teasing masturbation. During orgasm she stretched her legs out and up, and raised her torso.

The Voyeur masturbated to orgasm along with her.

The next day she and the Voyeur had a brief chat in the office before she took a taxi to the campus, and later that night before going to bed she again masturbated. She did this at least once every day during her four-day visit, and each time the Voyeur joined her.

When she checked out, Donna hired a driver to take her to the airport while the Voyeur remained in the attic. He did not want to say goodbye. He wanted to retain how he preferred to see her, in the nude, giving pleasure to herself and to him as well. She never telephoned again for a reservation, and he never knew what happened to her; but as far as he was concerned, she was forever his guest, his unaware object of desire, a link in a loop of lovely women whom he had once observed when younger and now reflected on during his emeritus years as a dislodged voyeur.

It might suggest a prolonged fantasized harem on his part but what was fantastic to him was that it had all been real—not drawn from his imagination, but rather what he himself had witnessed. His observations were a veritable slice of life that reaffirmed how incomplete was the picture of people seen functioning and posturing daily in such places as shopping malls, rail terminals, sports stadiums, office buildings, restaurants, churches, concert halls, and college campuses.

For more than thirty years he had been privy to other people’s privacy, but now, although myriad secret scenes remained engraved in his mind, he had lost forever the sense of wonder and excitation that used to precede each guest’s entrance into a bedroom—the sound of a key turning a lock, the sight of a woman’s foot crossing the threshold, the conversation of a couple while they unpacked their luggage, the unhinging of a brassiere, the bathroom visit, the removal of clothing, the lowering of the bedsheets, and, if those were indeed wooing words that he heard, his burning desire to see what would happen next.

He could only guess, of course, and that had been part of the thrill, the not knowing until after it had happened, as well as the surprises and disappointments that were part of the bargain. But whatever he saw nurtured his desire to see more. He was an addictive spectator. His occupation was anticipation. And it was from this that he had retired when he sold his motels.





THIRTY


BETWEEN 1998 and 2003, I was spending lots of time in China and elsewhere in Asia, following the fortunes of the Chinese women’s national soccer team and one of its players, Liu Ying, a principal character in the book I was working on, A Writer’s Life.

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