It’s like, super expensive so I have to stay away from the action. I have to zoom in all the time so the resolution is shit. But I still try to catch my friends in their best moments. We love watching them, in a basement, in an attic, on a tv in the A/V storage room. Even if the footage is shit and the audio is blown out, I still catch them. The glare of light, a voice as clear as birdsong. I catch it on video like a butterfly in amber. A monument to the good they have done. I am never on camera.
My right shoulder aches when we’re out at night but I will never stop getting out there when my pager rings. When they wrap up the problem of the night, I get the signal. A second page; I pack the camcorder and I'm back home on my bike, then carefully lowering the camcorder case by the strap into the basement window, then slinking into my bed. I have a ton of tapes. I have to hide them from my parents in the HVAC ducts; tied with dental floss threaded to the grate so they don’t get stuck and lost in there. I sleep in a cold basement with extra blankets, but I am only taking small risks in comparison. Whatever they get up to after I leave, it beats me.
But it’s nice to hang around them when I can. Everyone is happy to see me, asks if I was safe, asks about the tapes, and sometimes we do stuff as a group. We get to live our lives as if we are not being asked to take extraordinary actions in extraordinary times. Preten' like we're not facing the end of the world every week, or living through the end of a world every day. It's hard livin', and they should have someone who's not going through it to tell them that it's worth it. To celebrate them. Even if it's one guy with the camcorder.
I’m not saying I know what it's like in there, in those moments when the streetlights have you like the auditorium downlights. When all you got to get you through this week's creep is a good dress and a shiny gem. There I am, with a camera tucked away in an alley; I can't change that. I can't lose this fuckin camcorder. I feel like I have to stay put so that they know someone on the outside of their world is still rooting for them.
Like, do you promise not to tell any of them? That I'm scared of even thinking what would happen if their rabbit came to me and gave me one of those gems? That I'm scared of even wondering who I would be if I went on video?
That thought is intrusive.
It kills me.
I don't even let myself think of what colour the gem would be.
I'm terrified because I know why it's there. It's not there because I need to be somebody else (It is so important right now for me to stay me) It's there because there's something the camcorder never sees. It's something that both me and this fucking brick are blind too. There is a bond that seems unapproachable unless you go through one of those nights. There is a threshold that I am so terrified of even approaching, because I think that stepping up to it means that I won't get that page.
Nonetheless, if they beep I don' sleep. Like a ghost beckoned in a seance to haunt and help, I appear to participate in a life that I am not a part of but I yearn for. Something wonderful and strong that I don't think can ever come out of me. Only something that I can nurture and bask in.
That's who I am. The guy with a camcorder.
