NY Subway Masturbator Gets Off

That headline is second-rate. I really can't improve on NYPost columnist Andrea Peyser's hed:

Subway Jerk Off The Hook

A judge refused to impose a three-month jail sentence on the restauranteur who apparently mistook the R train as a porn-shop buddy booth, and so he's just on probation.

Dan Hoyt is a neat, finicky, remarkably small man with impressively large hands.

Ummm...

...

"I'm a changed man," Hoyt told me, unconvincingly, in the hallway of Manhattan Criminal Court, when I spotted him alongside much larger miscreants. With his painstakingly trimmed beard and ruddy skin, he looked more like a shifty public defender than a sexual deviant.

Has he really changed?

I asked Hoyt an aching question. One that no amount of public humiliation or court-ordered therapy seems to have wrested from his mind: Did your victim secretly want it?

"She may hate me. She may like me and want to go home with me," Hoyt said, to my amazement.

"It's her call." Right.

In fairness, it never hurts to "put it out there" and see what happens.

Until recently, Dan Hoyt was most famous for owning a Village restaurant, Quintessence, in which food is served raw - or is this a metaphor for his life?

Then last year, he got caught masturbating, like a garden-variety pervert, on the R train. In the daytime. He was caught doing it before, in 1994. This time, he chose the wrong woman to give a show. His victim, Thao Nguyen, snapped Hoyt's picture on her camera phone, mid-performance, and posted it on the Internet.

He pleaded guilty to public lewdness, a misdemeanor, in February. In passing sentence, Judge Alexander Jeong noted Hoyt's complete lack of remorse. Hoyt told New York magazine that his victim "would probably want to go out with me."

Hoyt's lawyer, Michael Bachner, insisted that therapy is removing these kinds of thoughts from Hoyt's mind.

Again, I understand where this cat is coming from. I have a whole desk full of restraining orders against me from women whom I pretty damn sure "wanted it."

Ah, the game of romance. A batted eye, a secret smile, a criminal complaint and court-mandated therapy. Women have such odd and indirect manners of letting you know they're interested.

...

Hoyt said nothing during the proceeding. But before court, he continued to paint himself as the victim of vigilante justice, a drum he's long beaten.

"It's actually illegal to take pictures in the subway," he said of his victim's actions.

She violated his privacy, see?

Don't I know it, brother. Don't I know it.

...

Meanwhile, Nguyen, 23, stood outside the courthouse, along with a half-dozen protesters, some of whom have been flashed themselves. They wielded signs that read, "Wash Your Hands Before You Serve Food," and "No Dan, I Wouldn't Date You."

"It doesn't seem like he's learned his lesson," Nguyen said.

It's so obvious she's still trying to get his attention. And so the tango of desire continues.

Related: Shock study shows that men are more satisfied with sex than women.

I, or anyone I've ever dated, could have told them that for free.

posted by Ace at 01:22 PM

| Access Comments