The incredible account of a psycho voyeur running a seemingly legit motel in Aurora, CO - yet using it to spy on guests' and document their sexual proclivities - ought to send shivers down any normal person's spine. The background info according to a page 2A story in yesterday's Denver Post, will be revealed in all its unseemly aspects on July 12, in a Gay Talese book "The Voyeur's Motel" published by Grove Atlantic.
The book documents the sordid and sleazy goings on by Gerald Foos in the Manor House Motel on Colfax Avenue in Aurora, where he outfitted more than a dozen rooms with fake ceiling vents and video cameras so that he could watch motel guests having sex. The sleazy rat commenced his videotaping in the mid-1960s and continued for decades, never getting caught. In 1980, he wrote to veteran journalist Gay Talese, and admitted his penchant to document the sex acts of visitors and even invited the author to see for himself.
According to the Post account Talese visited him at his motel, where Foos soon invited the journalist to his observation "laboratory" to check out an attractive young couple who'd come to Colorado on a ski trip. Then Foos and Talese crept up into the attic to spy through the fake vents. In his first New Yorker story - again according to the Post - Talese wrote:
"I saw a naked couple spread out on the bed below, they were having sex"
One wonders if Talese ever heard of being an accessory after the fact. Incredibly, to get a better look, Talese leaned closer — and his necktie slipped through the louvered screen that shielded the spyhole, dangling "within yards of the woman's head." Foos, irritated at the stupid lapse, yanked him back but then the next morning acted as if nothing odd had transpired.
In fact, far from kicking Talese's ass out Foos eagerly shared his trove of yellow legal pads, 15 years of detailed notes (the "The Voyeur's Journal") on what he'd observed behind closed doors in that Colfax motel. On reading those accounts, Talese also discovered that Foos had monitored motel guest's bathroom habits from viewing posts he'd installed in several bathrooms. How long did they take ? Now many times did they wipe their asses? And what newspapers did they peruse while taking a dump? All these were documented and more by the voyeur sleaze bag who can't even be prosecuted now because the statute of limitations has expired.
In no case did any video-taped person give permission for taping, far less even know what was going on,
Talese, trying to portray Foos' obsessions as real research, actually claimed that "in one year he created an annual report trying to identify significant social trends," He then wrote:
"In 1973, he noted that of the 296 sexual acts he'd witnessed, 195 involved white heterosexuals, who favored the missionary position. Over all, he counted 184 male orgasms and 33 female orgasms."
Foos also categorized people according to their sex drive, observing that 62 percent led "moderately active sexual lives" while "12 percent of all observable couples at the motel are highly sexed" and 22 percent exhibited a low sex drive. Three percent had no sex.
Over time, The Post notes, a relationship of trust developed between the voyeur and the journalist, so Foos mailed Talese 300 pages of typewritten manuscript of the logs through 1978. Now the book to come out in July will deliver the whole sordid scoop and one can only feel sorry for the unknowing victims who had innocently ventured into Aurora's Manor Motel between the 1960s and 1990s - and whose sex acts were captured on video tape by this pervert.
What is Talese's explanation for Foos finally coming clean? Talese draws parallels to the Unabomber, who did not want to take his secrets to the grave. He said:
"In a way, it's like the guilt of indecent exposure. He's hoping to come clean 30 years later and find redemption."
In fact, he can hope whatever he wants, but a lot of the people who will now learn how he taped them using hidden cameras and will be wondering if there's a chance they can perform a personal lobotomy on him.
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