Dancing in the Dark: Life as a Security Gun For Hire Guard
Contract security work exists in a peculiar limbo. Unlike police officers with their institutional backing and municipal authority, or in-house security with their corporate culture and benefits, the contract guard is perpetually on the outside looking in. They wear the uniform, patrol the premises, and carry the responsibility.
The metaphor of dancing in the dark captures this existence perfectly. Contract guards move through spaces they don't own, protecting assets they'll never possess, for clients who often don't know their names. They dance around liability, around confrontation, around the fine line between assertiveness and overreach. Every shift is a careful choreography: appear vigilant but not threatening, be present but invisible, stay alert while managing the crushing monotony of watching nothing happen for hours on end.
The "gun for hire" aspect adds another layer of complexity. Most contract guards aren't armed, but they're hired muscle nonetheless, human scarecrows meant to deter rather than engage. They're paid to absorb the risk that others don't want, to stand watch in parking lots where cars have been broken into, to monitor lobbies where altercations might erupt, to patrol construction sites where thieves might strike. When something does go wrong, they're expected to handle it, often with minimal training and maximum liability.
There's an odd intimacy to the job, too. Contract guards see buildings at their most vulnerable; empty, dark, honest. They witness the private moments of janitors working late, the couples arguing in parking garages, the executives leaving after everyone else has gone home. They become confidants to late-night workers and familiar faces to insomniacs. They know which doors don't lock properly, which cameras are broken, where the blind spots are.
Dancing in the dark as a gun for hire means accepting uncertainty as a constant companion. Will this contract renew? Will the next site be better or worse? Will tonight be the night something actually happens? Contract guards exist in a state of perpetual readiness for events that may never come, their vigilance tested not by danger but by its absence.
Yet for all its challenges, there's a strange freedom in the margins. No corporate ladder to climb, no office politics to navigate, no performance reviews that matter beyond "did you show up and stay awake?" The darkness becomes familiar, almost comforting. The solitude offers time to think, to observe, to simply exist without the constant demands of a more conventional career.
As dawn breaks and the day shift arrives, the contract guard clocks out, disappears back into their regular life, and the cycle begins again. They've danced through another night in the dark, a gun for hire who kept the wolves at bay; whether those wolves were real or imagined hardly matters. The building stands, the shift is over, and tomorrow night, someone will dance in the dark again.