The Voyeur Manifesto, Excerpt

Enclosed is another short story excerpt. To put this story in its proper context, the main character is a man who films women in various stages of undress for pay, without their consent. My inspiration was a segment on a television show about a skeezy landlord who filmed his female boarders in the shower by use of a hidden camera. Eventually the man was caught and the women unfortunate enough to be his victims stepped forward to share how they felt violated.

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Every morning, even Saturday and Sunday, I received a fresh e-mail from my boss. They were usually curt and to the point, typed in all caps. TARGET DRESSING ROOMS IN HECKART, 10:30 AM-12:00 PM, COLLEGE STUDENT RUSH. One wouldn’t want to hang around for too long, as that would attract attention. In what has become a habit, I stick around for forty-five minutes at most, and then keep moving.

The times really have changed. Technology makes much possible that was once impossible, or at least consigned to the realm of speculative fantasy. Photographs are much easier to take, because they tale only a fraction of a second or two to produce, but the customers clamor for videos. Don’t worry about trying to find our website. It officially doesn’t exist and, should you sign up, still doesn’t exist.

You won’t come close unless you’re an expert in navigating parts of the web beyond the reach of Google or have a few hours to spend fruitlessly linking from site to site. Most of our business is spread by word of mouth, though at times a few persistent and lucky people have encountered our site on a whim and subscribed. Everyone knows the risk involved. As the saying goes, you pays your money, you takes your chances.

Every assignment has its own challenges and unknown variables. One day at a department store I spied only middle aged women, which is fine for some, but we tend to get more requests for the younger set. I’ll let our customers provide the color commentary. For me, this is just a job. My foremost responsibility is not getting caught. I’ll concede there is a degree of taboo fun present for me sporadically, but that’s mostly faded into the background. I’ve become a professional, a label that always eluded me beforehand in every other occupation I tried.

How I do it is a trade secret I would prefer to keep mostly hidden. Suffice it to say that it wasn’t learned overnight. In the beginning, I silently observed whomever entered a stall, feigning that I was trying on clothes myself. Having obtained access to the dressing room area, I then balanced uneasily on a chair or by whatever elevation was possible for me.

My focus was on an immediately adjacent room. Half-standing, half-crouching, peeping just over the partition, I recorded a few minutes or so before noiselessly ducking back down for protection. Before I perfected my technique, I almost got caught on more than one occasion.

My first few attempts were unusable because I couldn’t hold my hand steady. I was too nervous, too fearful of getting caught in the act. I don’t know the identities of anyone else who works this same basic job. This is a condition of employment. We can’t be seen at the same place too frequently or be somehow linked together even in guilt by association. Some men are assigned very different tasks from my own.

Those who are skilled with hidden cameras have a basic understanding of concealing their equipment in an inconspicuous way, inside walls, bricks, bathrooms, and showers. Some shoot from the floor, with their camera focused upwards, capturing legs and feet. I’m not smart enough or proficient enough for setups like those. 

Since none of us receives formal training, what we bring to the table are skills we’ve likely cultivated as a hobby, often to appease our own private peccadillos. Those jobs I’ve just mentioned pay more because there’s increased risk involved and arguably more work. I’m not sure how to remove mortar around bricks or to chisel a small opening for a camera lens, nor do I care to learn.