“A 23-year-old with a foot fetish has admitted he tried to kiss, fondle and lick the legs and toes of more than 70 women on the New York subway over the last three years, prosecutors said on Wednesday. In a handwritten confession to police released by the Manhattan district attorney’s office, Joseph Weir said his aim was ‘to make them laugh and smile and open to talk to me.’ Weir, who was arrested late last week after attacking a woman on a subway in lower Manhattan, is charged with forcible touching, sex abuse and unlawful imprisonment — the latter charge referring to his habit of grabbing his victims’ legs and not letting go… In a rambling confession peppered with grammatical errors, Weir, who lives in Brooklyn, detailed how he accosted the women while riding the subways between Manhattan and the borough of Queens. ‘I get on my knees, bow, grab their feet, kiss them. I grab their hand and tell them ‘You’re so beautiful. I’m not worthy,” he wrote. ‘I do not give me real name. If they ask I will tell them my name is Anthony, Jason or Careem.’ Weir said his motivation was to get to know the women, but he recalled that often they would move away when he tried to ‘taste and touch them.’ ‘Some women had kick(ed) me and screamed,’ he wrote. ‘I’ve done this to about 70 women, mostly black.’ Prosecutors said dozens of women had started to come forward to identify Weir, who told detectives in his confession that he lived with his parents and two sisters.” — Reuters (US)

One of the many paradoxes of life in New York: so much shit happens here that often it fails to attract any attention at all. But then when it does attract attention, there are so many media outlets in New York that the coverage quickly becomes overkill.

Witness the “foot guy,” as he was already being called at his court appearance. This guy had been going around for years throwing himself at women’s feet. Most of the victims just shrugged it off. You undergo all kinds of weird adventures riding the subway every day. Druggies, gropers, fighters, bums, psychopaths — they’re as much a part of the New York experience as the Empire State Building or a night on Broadway. (They’re cheaper too!) One victim described how she had fallen asleep on the train and awoke to find the foot guy doing his routine. “Here was this thing,” she told one paper, “laying stretched out on the floor, with my leg wrapped around his arm, kissing my boot.” Once she shook him off, he “spouted a line from the movie ‘Wayne’s World.’ ‘I’m not worthy! I’m not worthy!’” But then how did the victim react? Like any crusty battle-hardened New Yorker. She brushed it off as “a harmless only-in-New-York moment.”

Once this story hit the news, though, seemingly every paper in town — how many are there? A hundred? — picked it up and tried to give it a twist. Horrible punning headlines appeared: Cops Lick Foot Fiend, Lick Her’s Quicker To Meet Gals, Another Sole Survivor On Train, More Victims Of Sicko’s Tootsy Role, and the most inscrutable of all, Weird-Without-The-D Night In Court. (The perp’s name was Weir, hence almost weird.) New Yorkers were also treated to pictures of some of the victims’ footwear: here’s one displaying her creep-attracting boot, here’s another showing “boots that drew attention of alleged foot fondler.” The New York Daily News ran no less than four stories about the case. Talk about an absurd level of detail.

When you set aside all the hysteria, what remains? A guy with a fetish that, in itself, is no big deal, though certainly he shouldn’t have been forcing it on anyone. And perhaps the most disturbing detail in the panoply of reports was the picture of the perp’s poor father trying to shield his son from reporters. The picture’s filename is “footlickerdad.” Man, no parent should have to go through that level of public humiliation, particularly when his child has committed a crime that, in comparison to the rest of the god-awful atrocities in the news, is practically silly.

VideoBox

It's like the iTunes Music Store for Porn. Download unlimited high-quality video for only $9.95/month.