What do we call those who watch the voyeur?
Gay Talese's new book of nonfiction, "The Voyeur's Motel," recounts the years that a Colorado motel owner, Gerald Foos, spent secretly observing his paying guests through special vents installed in the ceilings of some of his rooms. Foos was an unabashed voyeur, and he spied on his guests as they cleaned their toes, used the toilet, ate fast food, argued and — to his great masturbatory delight — engaged in sexual relations.
This is, of course, illegal.
Over decades, Foos kept meticulous notes, which he wrote in a faux-scholarly, detached tone, grandly referring to himself in the third person. He came to think of himself as something of a sociologist (a "pioneering sex researcher," he wrote), but Foos is not a scholar, and he was never detached.
He was deeply involved in his spying, often masturbating while watching. He preferred young, attractive women engaged in straight or lesbian sex. He grew frustrated when couples didn't have sex, or had sex with the covers pulled up or the lights turned off. Sometimes he would climb down out of the attic, go outside, turn on his car headlights to shine into the room so he could see better, and then climb back up to the attic.
His observations are not scholarly, but creepy: "The Voyeur couldn't believe a woman could appear so delicious and athletically in good shape despite her approaching middle years."
He was never caught, but over time, from his lair in the ceiling, Foos chafed at his anonymity. He wanted recognition for what he pompously called his "research." And so in 1980 he wrote to Talese, sending him photocopies of his journal, but swearing him to secrecy. They corresponded for years, and Talese went to Colorado to meet him, and to take his turn at the peephole.
Only recently, after retiring, did Foos allow Talese to write about him and name him. And so, for whatever reason, Talese did.
