Subject

I filmed Dominic during the day Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday one week, and Sunday the next. My colleague Brent shot the kid in the evening those days and I shot evenings on the days he shot days. We hadn’t started out shooting weekends, but early on, Carol and Rob complained about how much Dom had done over the weekend and how they’d never have those moments on tape. I considered saying “What’d we miss? Did he spit up in an interesting way? Move his arm back and forth like, oh, I don’t know, a baby?” Instead, I told Carol that Brent and I would work something out for the weekends and, as a result, we’ve been getting triple pay for weekends for the last 15 years.

Our fees hadn’t changed since then. We were always hideously overpaid, so we didn’t see the need to request raises. Rich, uncreative people don’t hesitate to throw money at two guys with a camera. Especially when it concerns their kids. Try it. Plus, we switched from tape to video in the early 2000s, a little bit before Dom turned nine. It saved us thousands of dollars and the McPhersons didn’t understand the change enough to pay us any less.

Brent and I could have gone to med school three times each with what we made filming this kid–not that we’d want to. We made more than doctors. So-so doctors, but doctors nonetheless.

I always called it a night the instant Dominic shut the door to his room. If he got out of bed after that, Carol and Rob were out of luck. When he was little, we had a night vision camera on in there, in case he did anything interesting while sleeping–see week 76 for his first night terror. I convinced Carol and Rob that we shouldn’t shoot at night anymore once Dom hit puberty. Interesting things were happening in there. Carol and Rob understood, agreed, and continued to pay us the same amount for less work.

As I was leaving for the night on the Monday before Dominic’s sixteenth birthday, Carol helped me pack my gear, which was always a sign that she had a request. These usually fell into one (or two or three) of three categories: more closeups of her angel’s eyes, slow motion whenever Dominic hugged her, or, and this was the most common, blemish reduction for her whenever she appeared on screen. My answer was always the same: “I’ll tell the editor, but he can be hard to get a hold of, and we don’t really have time for recuts if you want a new episode every week.”

I shut my trunk and smiled at Carol, prepared to repeat the mantra. Before I could speak, she put her hand on my shoulder and beamed back.

“Dommy’s getting a job, Rick.” She was tearing up.

“Oh, great. That’ll make for some good footage.” After so long, I was truly glad to potentially shoot something new. The job was a paycheck, a way to support my mom and eat organically, and I liked Dom as much as you can like someone you mainly encounter through a viewfinder, but it got boring. Even if Carol and Rob still wept with joy at each new episode I handed them.

Carol was doing just that now, standing at the house-end of the promenade–her word for their driveway–her hand still on my shoulder. The streetlights–her driveway’s streetlights–highlighted her tears.

“He asked if it could be his birthday present. He wanted his sixteenth birthday present to be permission to get a job. How wonderful is that?”

“That’s great.” It was great, in theory. He was a good kid and that was something a good kid would do. He was also a nerd and that was also something a nerd would do. I just felt bad for how things would go if he ever managed to enter the public school system (though I guess I would feel worse if he never managed to escape the grasp of home schooling). How would high school treat a kid like Dominic? His parents didn’t know he was a nerd. His mom would vomit at the thought of someone calling him one. Maybe it was the extra distance the viewfinder added that let me see just how socially inept Dominic would be amongst his peers, even if he certainly had a good future ahead of him. As kind, interested and awkward as Dom was, his future was, no matter what, bright with promise and driveway streetlights.

Still, the kids at school weren’t forty, like me–yikes–and didn’t appreciate chubby earnestness. Maybe he should’ve asked for a ‘vette.

“He’s come to appreciate you and Brent so much, all that you’ve done for our family, and he’s inspired by your dedication. He wants to join your crew.”

“What?”

“I told him he can start on his birthday.”

It took me a second to confirm that I didn’t know how Carol’s proposition would work. During this second–certainly, it had to be more than a second–Carol hugged me, dabbed a tear from the corner of her eye, and went inside. Dazed, I accidentally got in the backseat of my car.

I allowed myself to sink down into the plush leather and inhale the new car smell. I didn’t have a family, so I could spend my money on a constant supply of new-smelling cars. I could splurge down the highway at 80mph because of Dom. My mom could live in her own condo with round-the-clock care because of Dominic. My mom had grown so close to her Haitian nurse that she was no longer racist. Because of Dom.

I’ll never consider myself rich as long as I can manage to hate Carol’s promenade, but I still felt that I owed Dominic and the McPhersons, even if they had too much of everything already. Because of the McPhersons, I had permanent job security and decades of research for the eventual book-cum-documentary I’d make about my experiences–new cars and a comfy mom were great, but I’ve always told myself that this project is the ultimate goal: a meticulously documented account on the effects of spoiling children. And I’d throw in some bullshit about technology and Big Brother. I had the money to market it; I could get a small release, Oprah would tell everyone to read the book tie-in, ticket sales would sky rocket, and I’d be up for an Oscar. At the very least a Golden Globe. It actually seemed a logical progression until a few seconds ago.

How does one film someone helping you film them?

The car’s interior lights faded out.

———–

I didn’t keep copies of the majority of the episodes we’d shot. Brent and I had delivered an hour long best-of reel of Dominic almost every week for fifteen years; there were a lot of tapes and discs. It was already weird enough explaining my job to my dates. They didn’t need to see a wall of VHS tapes marked Dominic – Age 6 – Pool Party Freakout.

I was a little protective over what I had shot because, well, I had shot it. Repetitive or not, the footage was still something I had captured to the best of my ability. Our editor was a guy we hired out-of-house who I’d only physically met once or twice, and he had copies of every episode saved. We paid him a little extra to keep them stored away. We figured they’d come in handy in cases of emergency, tragedy or celebration. I’d want to go through them once I started the laborious and fattening process of editing my documentary.

I had one episode, though. It was on a VHS tape. I’ve watched it twice. Carol and Rob refused to accept it the week we shot it. They were too mortified to see what it contained. So I had it. I watched it the night that Carol hired Dominic for us.

Dominic was eight and he was climbing a tree because that’s what eight-year-olds do. The tree was in his backyard and his parents were on the patio, which is to say, they were very, very far away. It was basically just me and the kid. I could’ve said something along the lines of “Be careful, buddy,” but kids are supposed to climb trees and I can’t, to quote my contract, “interfere with Dominic’s life-related festivities.”

It’s not that he fell from really high up. He was, at most, six feet off of the ground, but he fell directly onto his outstretched hand and shattered the pudgy fucker. To this day, I’m a little bothered by the feeling of self-satisfaction I felt when I was able to record the incident without shaking the camera from shock or shouting “Oh shit!”

I’m more bothered, however, by what Dominic did after he pushed himself into a sitting position and examined his hand. Tears were coming and they were coming fast, but in those eerily calm seconds where he discovered that he was breakable and that being broken hurts, Dominic’s fearful eyes turned toward the camera I was holding. I zoomed in, thinking that he was about to break the fourth wall and address me, ask me for help, beg me to hold him and shush him and blow on his wound.

Instead, Dominic’s eyes darted away from the camera. He gripped his forearm, a few inches above the break, and started the long walk to his parents. The wails began after a few steps and all I could do was stand and film his journey. I couldn’t move enough to follow him.

It was the first time that I was able to pinpoint a problem with my job beyond my lust for money or the MacPhersons’ unhealthy fixation on their son. Up until then, I had considered my presence akin to a nanny–around a lot, but unsentimental. But Dominic was broken before he ever fell out of the tree and it was because of me. He had grown so used to my camera’s presence that he knew that he had to ignore it, broken arm or not. He knew that he was the subject of the documentary, but not a part of it. I was just a floating red light.

That was a weird, weird episode.

———-

Dominic lingered at the coffee counter, nervously bobbing his head. He shrugged at the barista, the only person in the shop whose job title was more ludicrous than Dom’s “Production Assistant/Subject.” Dom got out of line and dialed his cell phone.

Brent’s phone rang and I expertly avoided catching the boom mic’s dip into my frame as he answered.

“Hey Mr. Forrester,” Dom stared out the window of the coffeeshop, away from the camera. “Do you know if Mr. Barrow wanted cream or soy in his coffee?”

Brent twisted the boom mic to face himself. “I’ll ask him.” He turned to me. “Dominic wants to know if you want soy or cream.” He pivoted the boom mic toward me.

I’m stubborn in some ways, especially when I’m dealing with something I think is silly, and especially when that silly thing is forced upon me by others. Example: if I ever got married, I wouldn’t bother with the cake-face-smush or the garter toss. They’re silly and they’ve been forced into tradition by millions of naive kids. Further example: it always takes me a long time to get used to the MacPhersons’ ludicrous rules.

I resisted, with some effort, the urge to call across the room to Dom directly. I told Brent that I liked soy.

It was early morning on Dom’s first day and things were just getting started. His birthday party was in six hours and Brent and I were dazed. We knew that, at the end of the day, the party would end and we’d go home, alive and with footage. The dazing part was that we didn’t even have a rough estimation of how the coming day would work.

Brent took the camera from me to get a shot of Dom handing me my soy iced coffee. I heard the beep of Dom’s small hi-definition camera and tried not to look into its lens as he recorded Brent giving my camera back to me.

———-

Brent and I ate an early lunch on the MacPhersons’ patio while Dom set up for his party in the backyard. As we ate, we shot without sound, picking up insert shots here and there of Dom jamming tent poles in the ground and dragging extension cords for floodlights. We didn’t really need floodlights for the daytime party, but it was something for him to do. The camera we gave him hung around his neck, its red light held steady by his breasts. He occasionally stopped and faced me and Brent to record us recording him.

I’d take a few bites of my sprouts-on-ciabatta and then take the camera from Brent so he could take a pull of coffee and light a new cigarette. While my paycheck kept me in new cars and kept the door open for a big project down the line, Brent’s paycheck kept him in cartons of cigarettes and the possibility of a hard-out retirement via lung cancer. Our plans for the future were as different as my mom and her nurse, but the two of us had shared the exact same present for the past fifteen years, so I still thought of us as being in the same, weird boat.

“Is there anything else we need to do?”

Brent exhaled. “Not that I can think of. Just keep shooting. Once the party gets started, I’ll get out the other camera. We’ll wing it.”

“So I shoot you and him when he’s helping you, and you shoot us when he’s helping me? What do we tell the editor?” I zoomed in on Dominic’s hands as he taped down extension cords along the edge of the patio.

Brent laughed and put out his quarter-smoked cigarette. “Let Stan worry about that. Kid’s here to help us. The less thought we have to put into this, the better. Just shoot what happens.” He motioned for me to give him the camera.

I had forgotten how different we were, regardless of our same, weird boat. We had bonded over the crazyballs nature of what we did, but for the most part, we worked different days and hardly saw each other. We were hired separately and our interactions mainly consisted of the “make sure you get this footage” emails Carol and Rob sent both of us. I felt close to Brent every time I saw our email addresses quietly typed next to each other; it felt more real than the bond I felt with the kid I looked at for a living.

Brent’s footage and my footage blended seamlessly when Stan put it all together. It should have been jarring. Neither of us cared deeply about our subject or our employers, but I thought I still cared about what I was doing, the composition of my shots, the liveliness of my work. Brent’s footage was just the result of the camera-breaks he took between cigarettes. But our styles were identical.

————

Carol and Rob wanted to support Dominic’s decision to work with us, and that meant abiding by their rules for the documentary during the party. As long as Dom’s camera bathed his breasts in the red light of recording, Carol and Rob avoided directly acknowledging him. They welcomed everyone to “Dominic’s party” and called everyone together to “watch Dominic play party games” and counted down the minutes until “Dominic would begin opening presents,” but they respected the invisible fourth wall between them and their son.

Brent and I found a workable approach to the party. There were only a handful of kids there, mostly neighborhood strangers whose parents read the ads in the paper and made them come to “expand their horizons” or to “pocket as much food as possible.” Brent shot the overwhelmed little guests and kept an eye on me and Dominic, ready to shoot us any time we interacted.

I wanted to tell Dom that he could take a break. He didn’t need to be on the clock the entire party. You only turn sixteen once. Twice, tops. He seemed to be enjoying his job, but I wanted him to enjoy the party in a more normal way, even if just to quell my concerns that I’ve, you know, warped this child for the past fifteen years. The problem was that Dominic didn’t talk to me for the thirty minutes leading up to Present Time, and I couldn’t break the fourth wall and talk to him. All I could do was trail him with my red light as he chugged Mountain Dew and situated floodlights around the gift quadrant (I had to agree with Carol’s use of the word “quadrant” in this case. There were too many gifts for “table,” “area” or “space.” “Zone” may have worked).

The second that Dominic walked near the quadrant, Carol took the opportunity to announce that it was time for presents. She stood near, but not next to, her son and waved her arms for everyone to approach.

Dom was new to setting up lights, handling extension cords, and all the other shitty parts of Production Assisting. I understood that and wasn’t phased enough to ruin my shot when every single party guest tripped over the extension cord lining the perimeter of the patio, no matter which direction they came from or when they reached the patio. Every kid, Mr. MacPherson, and two of the actors hired to filled out the party; all of them kissed pavement. It was unfortunate, but there were only a few serious injuries. Carol didn’t waver; she continued gesturing for everyone to gather up until they did.

Brent sidled up next to me as Carol began placing the presents on the table for Dominic to retrieve. It was a delicate act for Carol: conveying the love involved in giving material items without actually making contact with the recipient she loved. I was focused on capturing the masquerade play out, so it barely registered to me that Brent was whispering something to me instead of getting a second angle.

“Dom tripped them.”

My camera finally wavered a little. “What do you mean?”

“When everyone was running up to the patio, he pulled the cord taut with his heel. The cord jumped out of the tape around the patio and everyone tripped over it. No doubt it was on purpose.” Brent sauntered to the other side of the patio, shaking his head slowly, and started getting B-roll.

————

Dom had set up our equipment under a small tent. Our stuff was pretty minimal: just a few chairs, a couple of computers for us to unload footage onto when our memory cards got full, and a charging station for extra batteries. It was bright out and we thought it’d be a good idea to keep the computers out of the sun. Dom apparently thought it’d be a good idea to ignore the bright white twine I gave him to tie down the posts and to use fishing wire instead.

I would’ve stopped him in the act if I had seen him. Our equipment was expensive, not something to play around with. He must have tied the posts while we were changing batteries. It was a well-timed and potentially expensive mistake. Luckily, Dom had the forethought not to tie down the rear posts, so when Carol scampered past the tent to retrieve a few gifts from Quadrant B, her foot caught the invisible wire and the tent flipped forward, completely missing the equipment and completely walloping her.

My camera didn’t waver. Dom’s didn’t either. He watched and recorded his mother’s struggle with the canvas tent and the invisible wire that ensnared her like a cobweb. When she freed herself, her look was clear in my viewfinder: she desperately wanted to apologize to her son for taking attention away from him. Instead, she motioned to the party guests that she was OK.

“I’m such a klutz!”

The guests applauded like that was the catchphrase they’d been waiting all episode to hear.

Brent and I were the only people that knew Dom had used the wire on purpose. It felt weird–perhaps the word “weird” should just be assumed by now–watching the guests clap and take pictures every time Dom opened a present, unaware that he was controlling the party in a few different ways. I felt like I was watching an operation from a seat high up in the theater, aware that the doctor, who still made less than me, had forgotten a vital step in his procedure.

As I shot gift after gift, one from “Mom” and one from “Dad” then one from “Mom and Dad,” and one from “Carol and Dad,” and one from “Rob and Mom” and one from “Your folks, silly!” I checked for the urge to say something and found nothing. I could look Dominic in the face, even if his mom couldn’t. I zoomed in on his pimply visage every time he opened a present, kind of recording his reaction, but mostly searching for an explanation. I wanted a sign that he knew what he was doing. The idea was new to me and I wanted it to be real.

When one of the three floodlights exploded, the deal was sealed. Brent and I had told Dom several times–check the tapes–not to plug multiple lights into the same outlet. He did and the first few feet of Carol’s half-mile of flowers began to smolder.

“No! Oh, no! Rob, do something!”

Her husband grabbed their garden hose and began reeling it in. The nozzle was somewhere in their vast yard and I hoped Brent was getting a closeup of his panicked face as Rob pulled and pulled and came up with nothing but more hose. Carol began shepherding the party guests toward the house, hoping her son would be caught up in the crowd and pushed inside. There’s no greater love than a mother trying to indirectly save her son’s life.

When everyone but Rob was in the house, I looked to Brent. He lifted his eye away from his viewfinder and blinked slowly at me. We were both registering what was happening. Dominic was acting out and we were the only people who could tell. He was directing his own show behind the safety of his fourth wall.

Rob was getting closer to the nozzle.

————

Dom went to bed right around dusk. I shot him turning off his camera and telling his mom that he was shaken up by his party, how “rough” the day had been for him, that he just needed to sleep it off. Carol heaved at this confirmation and promised Dom that they’d throw another party later in the week. As he walked to his room she waved goodbye to him like he was boarding a steamer to America. When his door shut, I customarily turned my camera off.

“We’ll throw another party later in the week,” Carol said, walking me to the door. “We’ll just pretend that’s the only party. Don’t use anything from today.”

I nodded. Whatever ended up happening, Dom was going to be in charge of how it played out. Whether or not I sent today’s footage to Stan, I’d be keeping a copy of it myself.

I walked to my car and loaded my equipment into the trunk. I started shifting the bags and crates around, trying to figure out how I was going to fit my gear and Brent’s in there. He had quit once the fire was out; given me his camera, lit a cigarette and said, “I almost quit when we went digital, and this does it. Too complicated. I’m not dealing with the brat trying to do our jobs for us.” I got the entire resignation on video and planned on holding onto that footage, too.

The sliding glass door that lead from Dom’s bedroom onto his own marble patio was open. He stepped through it when he saw me walking up to the columned barrier surrounding the patio. I set Brent’s camera on the barrier.

Dominic tried to look apologetic, but there was a sense of pride in his gleaming, downcast eyes. It was a look that had never graced my viewfinder.

“I’m not gonna tell on you. But you can’t leave me in the dark if you’re gonna pull shit like this. You understand me?”

He nodded and looked down at the small portion of his feet that extended beyond his breasts.

I continued. “How soon can you pull more shit like this?”

His eyes gleamed in all their glory when he raised his head and told me to name a time.

I gave him my card across the patio wall. “Email me. That’s the only way we talk, all right?” I patted the wall. “I’m a red glowing light to you. You’re assisting a red glowing light, all right? On your parents’ show, you’re as oblivious as they are.” I needed to hold onto the distance the viewfinder had inserted between us for 15 years. Dom had latched onto the distance and was aware of its power; it was better than any angsty hissy fit I had thrown when I was his age. Embracing the distance would give us more time to explore what he could get away with and why he needed things to get away with. I was already thinking of titles: A Star is Born.

I slid Brent’s camera closer to him. “You’re officially the assistant when you cash the checks your parents write. I’m working on another project, though. It’s kind of a long-term thing that I’ve been thinking about for a while. You’d be co-director. I pay well.”

Dominic hefted and examined the camera he had spent a lifetime unseeing. “What would I do?”

I lifted my camera and recorded him. “Whatever you want.”

Ben Dudley is a graduate student at the University of Cincinnati. His writing has appeared in Foliate Oak, Zero Ducats, and The Hell Gate Review. He writes and performs in short films and on stage.

Photo by Hobvias Sudoneighm.