My Time As A Night Watchman

One winter, I worked as a night watchman. More accurately, I was a security guard on a rotating continental shift. Here, ‘continental’ is deployed as in ‘continental breakfast’: old world classiness to cover up a shitty compromise. We worked in twelve hour shifts, eight to eight, switching every fortnight between night and day. Initially, it had been my goal to be a pure night guard. From film and TV, I had learned that you could get quite a bit of reading done that way. If a burglar should happen to knock over a length of rebar in my warehouse, I would peremptorily swing my flashlight around before deciding ‘must have been the wind,’ retreating to my Playboy Magazine and pot of coffee, except I would have the London Review of Books and a Monster Energy.