The Wedge and I

Would I ever give up my job guarding the big green wedge? Oh no, absolutely f***ing not. I’ve come to love the job intensely, and to feel I’m really making a difference. When Lars Nilbitz first saw me guarding the big green wedge at his group show at the El Paso Museum of Contemporary Art and praised me so effusively for keeping that eight year-old kid behind the black piece of tape on the floor, I had a feeling my life was about to change. I guarded Mr. Nilbitz’s big green wedge, along with Madeleine Vank’s Sculpture of the Letter L As It Weeps For a Memory and Per Oapt’s Angry Spaghetti Stain, for three weeks, and it was the wedge that drew the longest stares and tested my skills as a museum security guard the most. Nobody ever touched that f***ing wedge on my shift, and that’s exactly why Mr. Nilbitz hired me to follow it from El Paso to Abilene to East Fort Worth to Texarkana, always working the room where it hangs. And believe me, people want to get close to the f***ing thing. Many of them have never seen a big green f***ing triangular plaster and wood wedge hanging on the wall of a museum before without so much as a title card to tell people what it’s called, and a lot of people seem really upset that it’s there. Hence the need for my services.

Do I sometimes hate the big green f***ing wedge for getting so much attention from human beings when I would give up everything I own to have a single friend? Sure, sometimes. Do I despise standing in front of it eight hours a day, six days a week, never once being able to figure out what the point of it is? Absolutely. But how many f***ing big green triangular plaster and wood wedges are in the world today? What if this is the only one of its size (twenty-two feet by eighteen feet) out there? How am I going to feel if someone defaces the wedge, or God forbid, steals it? So you see what I’m saying. It’s all about duty. When my Friday shift is over, the wedge will be taken down and moved via trailer to the new Art Corridor at Broward County Community College, and I’ll go with it. Sure, the small blue pineapple with a dagger in it and the glass foot that some deaf French woman made are going too, and I’ll have to make sure nobody tries to swipe those f***ing things either, but to me it’ll always be about the wedge. Sometimes I have dreams where I’m floating out to sea as I lie on top of it, perfectly content. Other times I have dreams where it’s on fire and it’s crushing me, crushing me, scorching my flesh, squeezing the life out of me with its infernal weight (383 pounds), squashing my soul and everything in it until I feel an almost sexual surge of power course through me and I rip it to shreds with my f***ing teeth, which bleed and bleed---but I don’t even feel it. Anyway, it’s been a fun two years, and that’s basically why I’m sitting in front of you today applying for a job as Secret Serviceman. I like to think the President is the ultimate big green f***ing wedge. I should tell you that I actually was put on administrative leave from watching the wedge when I shot and killed a woman who made a threatening gesture towards it, but I really think that just shows I’m ready to take swift action to protect the stuff I’m supposed to. So, should I mention now that I’ll need a week off in November for some very risky brain surgery, or should I fill out the application first?