TWENTY-FIVE

VOYEURISM FOR Gerald Foos was a “predictable divination. He had no other choice.” He wrote that it made him “feel credible and worthwhile.”

“The Voyeur feels strong and brave in the observation laboratory but doesn’t feel particularly overpowering anywhere else, and his strength and courage when he is not in the observation laboratory comes from the excess energy remaining from having just been there.”

Up beyond the vents, he saw himself as something of an explorer in uncharted waters, “what the majority of people fear and deny in themselves. The taboos. The secrets. The devils and demons. The sexual unknowns. The curiosity. Someone has to be delegated the responsibility to confront these tangible existences and tell other people about them. Herein is the intrinsic essence of the Voyeur.”

But in the thousands of sexual encounters he watched, there were some that he found difficult to witness.

I checked in this family from a rural area in upstate New York, putting them in Room 11 on a weekly rate. The space consists of two double beds, and a small nine-by-twelve attached kitchen. The family consisted of a white male and wife, both in their mid-forties—he a 225-pound laborer of sloppy appearance, she a slim woman of average looks and mild-mannered. They were accompanied by their 17-year-old son, a long-hair type, and a 14-year-old dark-haired daughter who is pretty and well-proportioned for her age.

During routine irregular observations, the Voyeur has witnessed this family as enduring while suffering from a crisis of not having enough money to completely satisfy their needs. The father has just commenced working on construction jobs, but the cold and inclement weather, including snow, is playing havoc with his employment on a steady basis.

The wife is working and is receiving just enough money in order to pay the room rent.

The family is arguing and complaining at regular intervals. They need more room with privacy, which represents a constant consuming jeopardy in their lives. They were evicted from their last home for non-payment of rent, and their previous landlord has possession of all their household furniture and belongings.

The adults’ sex life is non-existent partly because of their problems and also their lack of privacy. Their son and daughter are not attending school, and have been sitting around the room smoking dope while their parents are away at work. Additionally, the teenaged son has been buying drugs from a pusher in the neighborhood, and this pusher also wants him to sell dope for him at the schools in the vicinity.

The Voyeur reported this plan to the local police department, but they inquired into how the Voyeur determined this situation and knew it was for real. The police said they couldn’t do anything because all the evidence was hearsay, and it is not good enough. Of course, the Voyeur could not disclose how he had discovered the plan.

Approximately one week after the family had moved in, the Voyeur noticed one afternoon the teenaged boy and his sister had finished playing a game of scrabble at the kitchen table, and then they moved to the bed to watch television. For the next twenty minutes, after they had smoked some dope, the conversation turned sexual and he began touching her around the shoulders and forced his hand on her breasts. Then he lowered her bra, exposed her breasts, and pushed her back on the bed.

“You’re going to do it to me, aren’t you?” she asked. She seemed not to be alarmed.

“Don’t you want me to?” he asked.

“Not today,” she said. “It’s too late, and Mom and Dad may come home early.”

“No, they won’t be coming home yet,” he said, “and it won’t take me very long.”

He pulled her trousers off, then reached in his billfold for a rubber, but she said: “I really don’t want to do it now.”

Despite her objection, he removed her trousers and panties and soon was entering her body. He grabbed her legs and placed them over his shoulders, and then he shoved himself into her.

“It hurts,” she cried. His groans mixed with her cries were very audible to the observing Voyeur. After five minutes of heavy thrusting, he reached an orgasm.

The two of them remained close together for a while, still in a position of intercourse. She then pushed against him, wanting him to get up. He removed his penis as the rubber slipped off, but part of it remained inside her.

“Hold still,” he said, pulling the condom out.

“You lose it in there all the time,” she said.

After taking hold of the condom, he flushed it down the toilet. She immediately pulled on her panties and trousers. He came back to the bedroom, lay beside her, and they returned to watching television.

Conclusion: The family in Room 11 stayed one more week, and then departed for a destination and dismal future unknown to the Voyeur. The couple’s son and daughter, tender in years and yet fully engrossed in the drug culture and sexual permissiveness of the 1970s, suffer immensely by not attending school and being allowed to sit around all day smoking dope. The most common form of incest is probably brother-sister, especially in poor families where children of different sexes must share the same bedroom.