Not Paying for Museum Admission Not Worth It

Mary and Kim and I wanted to go to a museum, but we didn’t want to pay. I didn’t want to pay because I had been there before and didn’t like it. Kim didn’t want to pay because she felt strongly that museums should be free. I don’t know why Mary didn’t want to pay, but she didn’t want to pay either.

I had a plan. I knew there was a restaurant in the back of the museum, and I knew that if you went to the restaurant, you didn’t have to pay. I suggested we say that we were there for the restaurant. This was lying and I don’t usually like lying, but it was a special occasion. The stakes were low. It was an insider tip. An insider tip involving stealing museum admission. It would save us $10 each. Mary and Kim said, sure let’s try it.

There was a crowd in the lobby. We walked through the crowd to the entrance, where a man was checking people for stickers, proof of admission. Where are your stickers, asked the man. We’re just going to the restaurant, I said. Okay but you have to get a sticker, he said. Okay, I said. We went to the desk. We just want to go to the restaurant, I said. Take these stickers, she said. They were the same size and shape as the ones you got as proof of paid admission, but they were silver and the ones you pay for are black and white. We went back to the entrance and showed them to the man. He waved us through.

We walked to the restaurant. This is the restaurant, I said. It looks like a restaurant, Kim and Mary said. We walked past the restaurant to the front doors. A man with a walkie talkie was holding the door. Can I see your stickers? he asked. We showed him our stickers. Those are the wrong stickers, he said. We’re just waiting for the restaurant, we said. You need the right sticker. Well it’s cold out, said Kim. This was true. It was cold. She suggested we could go around to the back of the restaurant. The man said okay. So we did that.

There was a stairway back there and we went up. I was starting to not feel so great about my great plan to not pay to go to the museum. I was feeling stressed out. What if the man with the walkie talkie sent another man with a walkie talkie after us? What would happen? What would we do? What would we say? Can you get arrested for sneaking into a museum? Has anyone ever been arrested for that? We could be the first.

We should have just paid, I thought. I would have paid for us all, to not have this stress. But we were in, almost. I wondered if Mary and Kim were stressed. Are you stressed? I asked Mary and Kim. No, they said, knowing that in the scheme of stressful things in life, walking around a museum without having paid to walk around that museum is not really a very stressful thing at all. We climbed the stairs.

I took my impostor sticker off my jacket and put it on my jeans. Then I took it off my jeans and held it in my hand. I folded it in half, twirled it between my fingers. The silver part was still on the outside. I unfolded it and folded it the other way. I tried to put it back on my jeans but it wouldn’t stick. I put it in my pocket. I scanned the stairs for actual real stickers. They must fall off all the time, right? Maybe I could find three and then we’d have the stickers and it would all be okay. Maybe I could ask someone who looked like they were on their way out for their stickers. But how could I know they were on their way out. I thought about that and then the stairs ended and we were in a gallery.

In the gallery I was not interested in the art, but I was interested in the number of people with walkie talkies. There were a lot. Did they know? Were they looking for my sticker? Did they know about my sticker? Was their whole job to check to see if I was wearing a sticker? Were they going over their training manual in their head right now, page 43, what to do when a person is not wearing a sticker? I skirted around the perimeter of the room.

We left the gallery and went into another gallery. I walked through the door and past the person with the walkie talkie quite fast. I did this on purpose, so it would seem like I belonged. Also I thought if I was fast, he could not see that I didn’t have my sticker. I said in my head, “I belong,” as I walked past him, because lies are better when you believe them.

I wandered around the gallery and pretended to stare at some art but really I was staring at all the other people in the gallery. They all had stickers. I couldn’t believe there weren’t more rebels. Really? Everyone just puts a sticker on in a visible place because they told you to put a sticker on a visible place? For patrons of a modern art museum, the compliance with authority didn’t seem very modern.

A tall posh woman in a cranberry dress and tall boots was staring at some art. She didn’t have a sticker. She glided around the gallery like it wasn’t anything. I studied her so that I could glide around the gallery like it wasn’t anything. Because of her poshness, I decided it was very unlikely that she was without a sticker because she had not paid. But it is possible that she could be the kind of kleptomaniac that gets off on stealing moderately-priced museum admissions. She was holding a coat. Her sticker must be on her coat.

We left the gallery and I grabbed my friends. We should take off our coats, I said. They will think the stickers are on our coats and it will be fine. I was excited about this plan. But they both already had their jackets off. They had figured this out before me. Or they were warm. You’re pretty stressed about this, said Kim. No I’m not, I said. I was lying.

We went through a few more galleries but we passed a lot of them. I skipped the ones that had people with walkie talkies at the door. I don’t know why Mary and Kim skipped them, but it was not because of that. We went up some more stairs. There was one gallery there. We went inside and sat down. Kim and Mary liked the installation and had heard of the artist. I liked that there wasn’t someone with a walkie talkie in the room.

We returned downstairs, back to the back hallway behind the restaurant where we started. Did we want to sit in the restaurant and drink tea, like we’d planned, I asked. We did not.

We left the museum and crossed the street. On the wall of the building there was a row of black and white museum stickers stuck to the brick. This would have solved our problem, Mary said. Next time, Kim said. Then they laughed because there would not be a next time because the museum had not been fun. I decided that if I came again I’d just buy a sticker. No I’d buy two.

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