He recalled that one of the early trends of the 1970s’ Sexual Revolution that was evident at the Manor House Motel was when couples began to undress one another, rather than to change in a bathroom, or with the lights out, as had been the custom in earlier years. Another sign of the ’70s’ liberation was an increase in his guests’ participation in group sex, interracial sex, and same-sex activity, adding that “people began to be freer with one another, sexual relations seemed to be more relaxed, and women began telling men what they wanted, being more open and less shy about it.”
He, too, became physically responsive, he said, explaining, “I became more pepped up sexually up there—any man would, any woman would—and so consequently I would come down and Anita and I would have great sex. We always had great sex,” he said, nodding toward Anita, who sat nearby. After a pause, she nodded back.
He conceded that he learned a lot about sex from his wives, first from Donna, and then even more from Anita. While he was an obsessive watcher, he had known few women intimately beyond his wives, he pointed out. As a bachelor in the Navy for four years, he had been picked up a few times by bar girls, and during his twenty-year marriage to Donna he had been faithful until the final year, when he had the brief fling with the Denver public relations woman. And he had been faithful throughout nearly thirty years of marriage to Anita, he continued, adding that what made Anita a compatible partner, in addition to her loving nature, was her being “visual.” By this he meant that, unlike most women, Anita liked watching other people having sex and also enjoyed viewing porno films. Most women more preferred being watched than watching others, he said, which may partly explain why men spent fortunes on porn and women on cosmetics.
“Only 10 percent of women are voyeurs,” he said, “while almost 100 percent of men are voyeurs.” He described Anita as being among the 10 percent.
“This is true?” I asked her.
“Yes,” she answered in a soft voice.
“Yes,” he declared, and went on to explain, “I’m not saying that other women aren’t turned on by erotic material. I’m only saying that men are much more visual, and that women are more likely to be sexually aroused by reading erotic material in a book.” He recalled having watched many female guests at the Manor House holding a book with one hand and masturbating with the other.
“Since you have spent half your life invading privacy, why are you so critical of our government invading our privacy in the interest of tracking down terrorists and other criminals?” I asked.
“I don’t like criticizing the government—it’s the only one we have, and everyone is allowed mistakes,” he said, “but I think we’ve made too many mistakes. Government voyeurism is now coming out of the woodwork. Big Brother now has incorporated our lives, our opinions, our thought processes—we’re all being recorded electronically on devices few of us understand. We just know it’s there. I counted twenty video cameras around your Embassy Suites hotel this morning.
“Any justification for this level of voyeurism at the Embassy Suites is nonexistent,” he said, and he repeated what he had told me many times in the past: his voyeurism at the Manor House was “harmless,” because guests were unaware of it and its purpose was never to trap or entrap or criminalize anyone. But he suggested that the government-conducted voyeurism that we know today is essentially an evidence-gathering game; and anyone who actively opposes this invasive technology at this time, in this period of post-9/11 protectiveness, might be regarded as unpatriotic or even treasonous.
“People in power want the status quo,” he said, and such people do not want to be exposed as deceitful and duplicitous—which is what the former National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden, managed to do in releasing documents alleging that, for example, U.S. intelligence agencies were even tapping the cell phone of its ally in Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel.
“Edward Snowden in my opinion is a ‘whistle-blower,’” Gerald Foos said. Instead of being driven into exile in Russia, and considered by many to be guilty of treason, he should be praised “for exposing things that are wrong in our society.”
“Do you not also claim to be exposing wrongs in our society as you share with us what you described in The Voyeur’s Journal?”
“Yes,” he said. “And I also consider myself a whistle-blower.”
“And what do you conclude from all that you’ve witnessed?”
“That basically you can’t trust people,” he said. “Most of them lie, and cheat, and are deceptive. There are many, many examples of this in The Voyeur’s Journal, like all those people failing the ‘honesty test,’ and preaching one thing and doing another. What they reveal about themselves in private they try to hide in public. What they try to show you in public is not what they really are—and knowing this has made me very skeptical of people in general. In fact, because of what I learned from the observation platform, I’m now antisocial. I just don’t trust people much, and, if I can avoid them, I do.