The Joys of Travel

I'm in a motel room in the middle of nowhere, travelling for a business run by Christian fundamentalists who know I'm an unbeliever, an unsaved, even (surely they suspect) a willful one. I can't complain about my job: I do a good job for them and the paychecks are on time, they clear, and the pay isn't bad. I don't dislike the company, even though they do things I don't agree with: they don't proselytize to me and I don't make any wayward comments to them. But at the core of things, though I think (maybe from self-delusion, I concede) they like me personally, I think they consider me an outsider. In fact I'm sure of it.

One of the things about leaving Christianity behind intellectually is that if you were raised in it from an early age, part of the thinking of it stays with you always on an emotional, animal level. So I'm feeling deliciously naughty right now, but on the other hand, I have no guilt.

When I came into the motel-a former Holiday Inn 70s expansion Holidome property replete with indoor putt putt course and pool in the lobby-I walked past the outside rooms with secondary doors and bay windows looking out to a scenic parking lot. Sure enough, in one lit room. I saw a rhythmic motion and stopped to look, ensconsed in the parking lot by a small tree.

It was the world's oldest scene: a man and a woman. I'll spare the details, but it was just what you'd expect, and I watched them for the better part of five or ten minutes.

I did nothing wrong: I was in a public place and watched an act where the participants, had they had any expectation of privacy, could and should simply have closed the inner drapes. Still, had they spotted me, there would have been problems. That, I suppose, made it more interesting.

Porn isn't my thing, because, among other things, the participants are on camera knowingly and are acting. Even amateur stuff with couples is not the same as seeing people do what they do for their own reasons, because they know they're being watched.