Superbowl

          After months of deliberation, the vinyl Black Lives Matter banner at the museum has finally been replaced with one made of metal. Occasionally some guy passing by will stop and stare at it for a while, perhaps running a hand over the bolts securing it in place, but so far no one has defaced it but the pigeons.

          On my days off this week, a young man kept trying to sneak into the museum without paying. He actually did get in the building and sat on a couch in one of the empty galleries for a while. One of our staff sat in a chair across from him to see what he was up to. The young man got up and threw a punch in his direction. The employee, a rather tall, if not particularly menacing, gentleman, merely stood up. The young man fled.

          The next day he was back, arguing to the ticket takers that because we have a Black Lives Matter sign hanging up, that he, being Black himself, should get free admission. I would say there's a case to be made there, or would be if he hadn't already snuck in and thrown that punch. He seemed to be of the impression that we are, in fact, a Black Lives Matter museum. It is a rather prominent sign. He grew increasingly irate, and ran around to the other entrance, where a number of staff members were lined up waiting for him. He tried to get shove them and they ended up pushing him out the door. Screaming with rage, he brandished a pair of brass knuckles but luckily didn't use them. By the time the police arrived forty minutes later, he was long gone.

          While all this was happening, I was having a lovely weekend. Now, the birds twitter in the bushes as I walk to work, the morning sun casting a yellow spotlight between the buildings. Crows fight raucously over a bag of Lay's Flamin' Hot potato chips. I step over a jacket, a sweater, a bra decorated with pictures of peaches, and a curling iron. I say good morning to three people huddled outside a row of tents. They say "good morning" in concert, like a murder of schoolchildren.

          Everyone at work is a little on edge, worried that the angry young man will return. My biggest fear is that he will come back with a gun. A coworker comes in and says she just saw him a few blocks away, yelling at some garbage cans. It's hard not to feel paranoid, especially with all the shootings which we've apparently all just accepted are part of everyday life in America. No one seems outraged or upset by all this violence, just beaten down, resigned to the fact that nothing is ever going to be done about it. Mass shootings don't even make the news anymore. Here at the museum, some suggest that we need to hire guards with experience in use of physical force, perhaps arming them with some sort of cattle prod. I don't know what the solution is, but this strikes me as being completely insane.

          But aside from being gorgeous and sunny out, today is also the Superbowl, and so the galleries are nearly empty. A few lost-looking college students, a few couples on dates bumbling about. Most of the galleries are closed, anyways. A number of people are lured in by the enormous Friday Kahlo banner out front, which clearly states that the show doesn't open for another week. (It's also not strictly a Frida Kahlo show, though it's being marketed as such. We are all dreading having to explain this to disappointed visitors.) The hours creep by. There is nothing to distract me from the snuff films projected inside my head; images of my coworkers getting mowed down, the sounds of their screams playing in an endless loop. Cattle prods or no, we are sheep to the slaughter. I try to imagine what it feels like to be shot, thinking about how upset my mother would be. I know it doesn't help to think this way. I guess I'm trying to prepare myself somehow, as we all just mill about, staring out at the sunshine, resigned to our fates, waiting, wishing we could go home and scream our lungs out at some mindless game.