Some Dudes are A-Holes: exhibit B

So on Tuesday I was sitting here, as I am now, at the desk at the gallery, no doubt working on something VERY important. (That's how I roll. I look like I'm just surfing the internet but I'm actually almost always working on one project or another of my own. And they're important. Top secret stuff. You wouldn't understand.) It was mid-afternoon, the time of day when my mood invariably takes a sudden turn. Sometimes it's into the realm of indiscriminate randiness, when I can't stop thinking about sex for an hour at a time. Sometimes it's laziness, which in turn inspires drool-inducing, mind-numbing, ripping-my-own-hair out boredom so profound I can't even come up with any ideas for things to do. And sometimes, particularly this week when I've had a bunch of deadlines and projects to work on and lots of things on the agenda, it's hysterical, headache-causing stress, which in its turn morphs into annoyance and very near explosive bouts of temper every time the phone rings.

On Tuesday, it was stress/anger. I was trying to keep myself under control to avoid head-explody (nobody wants brains on the artwork, after all), when a middle aged gentleman in khakis, a very very bright orange polo shirt, and black suspenders walked in. The outfit in itself was warning of a really annoyingly unselfconscious geek of a human being, but to add insult to injury he was carrying a gigantic camera in a case strapped around his neck.

He walked right up to me, blinking behind his thick glasses, and said, in a nasal and wheezing voice, "Excuse me, I hate to bother you," --PS, when people come into a retail establishment and say this to the person at the desk, they ALWAYS, very definitely DO mean to bother you-- "but could I ask if I have permission to take some flash photographs of the beautiful sculptures downstairs in the entryway to the building? The flash isn't very bright, but there is a flash on it, but I just thought those sculptures were so beautiful, and..."

"Yes," I cut him off. "Those sculptures are open to public view and as such they can be photographed. People take pictures of them all the time."

"Oh, well that's good," he started up again. "I always like to get permission before I take photographs of any artwork because sometimes, if you don't and you start to take pictures, then the man at the desk in the lobby will come and tap you and say, 'You can't do that.' So I always come in to ask permission first, and I was just out to lunch nearby and saw a way to get from 56th to 57th near your building so I walked through and there were these beautiful sculptures and I thought, 'I should ask if I have permission to photograph these wonderful artworks'..."

He just kind of kept going like that for a while. He talked as if everything were one long sentence, jam-packed with fuckery. While he was going through his laundry list of inane prattle, the phone ran several times, a few other people walked by and spoke to me, and he just kept going. I went back to whatever I'd been doing on my computer, even, and he kept right on. Eventually he did seem to pick up on the fact that I wasn't listening, and then leaned in: "May I have permission to take a look around this lovely gallery, then, before I leave?"

I'm sure I shot him a "please go fuck yourself and/or die" look, but I said as politely as possible, "Yes, go ahead. We don't permit any photographs in the gallery, however."

"Oh, no, of course not, I wouldn't want to..." he started talking as he walked away. For all I know, or care, he could have been talking to himself the entire time he spent walking around the gallery.

He was admiring the lovely artworks for a good 20 minutes before meandering back my way, at which point he IMMEDIATELY started up with the boring chatter. I was astounded. This happens from time to time at my job, it's nothing new that somebody decided I was to be their next victim in a long line of serial attacks of drivel, but I'm always amazed by them. I mean, are these people really just lonely and possessed of a smidgen of acumen which tells them that above all other people in the universe, gallery receptionists are helpless to get away from them? Or do they do this to everyone? I get images of them sitting in busy restaurants, telling the waitstaff in great detail about the spices they uses on their own tilapia at home, while food goes cold at the order-up window and other customers wait impatiently for service.

This time, dude was telling me about how he comes from a family of artists; his sister is an artist and his aunts are artists; his daughters are artists; except the one daughter who started out in a program for studio art in college but then switched to English; but she produced some really great pieces that friends are constantly praising; he thinks someday she'll go back to art; because there is no reason to do just one thing; we can choose what we do...

In the middle of his slowly unspooling yarn of crap, the phone rang several times in a row and I was able to stay on the phone just long enough for him to lose interest. He thanked me and then walked away. I heard him press the button for the elevator, and in a spirit of profound thankfulness, I finished my calls and hung up.

Well, he HEARD me hang up. And to him that meant I was fair game for a lecture on mental handicapped-ness, from someone afflicted by it. And that bastard turned right around, just as the elevator was opening for him, and walked BACK to my desk!! He immediately launched into a story about how his English major daughter had made a painting when she was 2 and 1/2 and they'd framed it and given it to his parents, and those parents invited some art experts over for dinner, and the art experts thought that the painting was very good, and it was just so funny because it had been done by a 2 and 1/2 year old. And he just always really resonds viscerally to art even though he's no expert; he just sees things and likes them; and he's kind of an artist too; he's from an artistic family, you know; he takes photographs of art, flash photographs, with not a very bright flash, and his relatives have all said that his photographs are very good...

Seriously, this went on for a good ten minutes more. My co-workers kept walking past the desk and just leaving me out to dry for this ass-hattery. He wouldn't go away. Let me tell you, when I'm in the depths of a stressed-and-angry bout, this kind of situation makes me virtually shake with suppressed rage. I was ready to knock his block off but had to keep myself in check because I was, after all, at work.

I suppose he either lost interest, or I just began so blatantly ignoring him that he got bored, and wandered off, out into the July heat, to wear the nerves of more helpless gallery workers down to their very thinnest and last wire.

Dude was an A-hole.