Read by Keleigh Wolf
Mandatory Meeting for Museum Guards Before The VIP & Members' Exhibition Opening Reception
The gallery will be dark, and it may be difficult to see. It is imperative that you keep the floor dry. A few visitors will ask about these paintings hanging on the walls. Beautiful, aren’t they? Both visually and thematically complex. Gaze at them too long, you’ll lose your mind. For your own safety, don’t stare at the artworks, but let the visitors look wherever they please. We’re guards, not Surgeons General, and the last thing this institution needs is additional litigation.
Blowtorch, eyes on me.
Any questions?
It’s a reflecting pool; it reflects.
Any more questions?
Then I would like everybody to read silently the museum mission statement tattooed on your inner forearm, and let us now renew our commitment to aesthetic preservation, artistic inquiry, safe visitor experiences, and high survival rates.
Blowtorch, repeat back what I just said.
Tomorrow night is the opening reception. I will remind you that the Friends of the Museum are the most endangered of all our guests. They feel so comfortable, so at home, which is where more than twenty thousand people accidentally die each year. The kitchen and the bathroom are the most dangerous rooms, and I hope none of you smoke in bed. Get stoned before sleeping, and you’ll forget your dreams. Forgotten, but not gone, they’re archived in the long term storage units of your hippocampus, or traced across your quaternary lobes. Sometimes I dream about exhibits I’ve never seen, in galleries that don’t exist…
Guards spend so much time in rooms at the museum they think they develop immunity to the art, but remember what happened to our beloved colleague and friend.
Some people accuse me of hating the artworks, but that’s not true. I only show them the fear and respect they deserve.
Eat well. Exercise. Get plenty of rest. A few of you are rolling your eyes, but I myself have fallen asleep on the job, and, trust me, it never ends well. You want to hear a true story? Of course you do. The first time it happened was at college, my first year. No one was in the museum so I decided to rest my eyes for just a few minutes. An emeritus professor shook me awake. He owned some of the paintings on loan, two were Picasso’s, and he reminded me that I was being paid minimum wage to protect these priceless cultural artefacts. Guard them, he said, with your life. Needless to say, I was mortified and could never enroll in History 238, The Political Economy of the Modern Middle East, and now I’ll never understand what the hell is going on over there.
For those of you in the back, Blowtorch just asked, “Is our first priority the safety of the paintings or the people?” Don’t laugh. It’s a fair question, and Blowtorch is not the first to wonder. I recommend reading the novel Leaving the Atocha Station by Ben Lerner. The first chapter dramatizes a dilemma of fictionalized guards at the Prado, and in doing so explores our many challenging professional responsibilities and sheds light on certain contradictions deep-rooted in the ownership and exhibition of art objects. On second thought, Blowtorch, just study your tattoo, don't let anyone throw loose change into the pool, and keep the floor dry.
Why do you all look so tense? This is not your first dance. Remember the Domesticated Birds show? The strong-legged Impeyan pheasants, with their cruel curved beaks? Or how about The Ancient Art of Sports? Razor-edged quoits. Metal spikes. I don’t have to tell you that art demands sacrifice. Or that we can’t un-see what we’ve seen. Keep in mind that only a handful of visitors are here voluntarily. Most have been recruited, dragged against their will. Others wander in off the street, looking for hot beverages.
Look up. See that transparent container suspended from the ceiling? Every so often, a drop of water will impinguate, then fall, disturbing the ataraxia of the obsidian. It’s an elegant and enthralling performance, but I had better not catch any of you eyeballing that bottle while on duty. You should be patrolling the perimeter, covering the benches; there might be impulsive children, folks balancing on crutches. What do you see when you gaze into that black water? Do you hear a dark tide rushing through your veins? Full moon tomorrow night. Have you all rubbed Blowtorch’s head for good luck?
You glimpse a certain painting, and it ruins you for life. In the kitchen of my childhood home hung a print of a marine organism from Oceania, an imperator imperialis, the royal spur, reputedly rare in collections. The spirals of that shell, its radiating form, did something to my brain. I avoid sexual intimacy. Feel always too hot or too cold. I’m sure everyone in this room has a similar account. I have no children, but if I did, I would raise them in a house with virgin walls.
We store the mops in the cleaning supplies closet. It’s usually locked, but you can find the key behind the front desk. It should be in the drawer with the extra membership application packets and the amyl nitrite vials. If the key isn’t there, check the karaoke room, the pool table, the wine cellar, and the wet bar in the educational curating department. Or screw the mop, and borrow a towel from the private massage parlor hidden behind the founding collection room. I strongly recommend the hot oil rub. They wrap you in raw unstretched cotton canvas. I can’t talk about it.
You may be interested to learn that the water in this reflecting pool is kept at a comfortable ninety-two degrees. Yes, Blowtorch, you may cannonball, but please try not to splash the Baked Alaska. Oh, look, here comes the artist with the cigars.
(c) Rachel Karyo, 2018
Rachel Karyo’s short story “Beavers” is published in the horror anthology Deep Cuts: Mayhem, Menace and Misery. Her flash fiction “The Rachels” has been performed by Liars’ League NYC, and her short story “Brownie 2” will be published in the 2018 issue of Noctua Review. Rachel lives in Seattle, Washington.
Keleigh Wolf is an American poet, performer, journalist & activist. She performs as Coco Millay with the London Poetry Brothel and she also founded The Little Versed Poetry Collective, produces and hosts the Propaganda Poetry radio series, and is Poet in Residence at Kabaret @ Karamel where she curates monthly events.
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