Silly Catholics... Metal Mayhem

I gave a group tour today. This is a normal occurrence. I wake up, go to work get my list of tourists, meet them, ask where they are from and then tell them where they can get a cheap bottle of water. I encounter about 20 of these people a day. Single serving clients, they enter into and out of my brain as they tell me their names. Sometimes I can remember where they are from, when they have an affiliation with either Atlantic City or Philadelphia, or in rare instances when they are friends with Minor Threat members, or when the man on my tour is the author of a historical text called India after Gandhi, published by an imprint of Harper Collins, but these people are rare. Today I had two people on my tour that seemed just a little left of center. They both were wearing metal band t-shirts. Akin to the kind you would see for Napalm Death or Cannibal Corpse. Letters all hard to read, and scratchy. They were also wearing pentagram necklaces.

We get all the way to the Sistine Chapel without incident. Mind that I am not allowed to speak inside the chapel because it is considered a holy place. So my group goes in, and I tell them that I will meet them at the guided tour exit on the right hand side. Five people on my tour don't show up. I start freaking out inside. I never lost the headsets before, and five is a lot to lose. I really need to keep everyone on my tour, because I am being paid shit and lately the tourists have been stingy fucks when it comes to tipping. I don't want to be responsible for the headsets.

I search the Sistine Chapel frantically while the rest on my tour wait for me in front of the pope's private quarters. I am running around the chapel with a huge bottle of water over my head, repeating "We are meeting by the far right door." By speaking in the chapel I am risking my job, but I keep repeating myself. After fifteen minutes, I give up all hope on making enough money that going to work was even worth it. I continue on down an ugly hallway designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, who no matter how good he was at sculpting definitely lacked in the architectural department. The steps are extra large, for transporting newly selected popes by donkey to great the people. How fucking elegant can these decrepit old men be. Today, the normal route is blocked by a rope, and we are escorted down the steps that are only supposed to be used by the pope and the Swiss guards. I try to emphasise how cool this is to my tourists, what a once in a lifetime experience this is, but I don't think they were listening to me after I lost five paying customers. We end up outside in Saint Peter's square, where I wait with eight people from England for the straggler in their group. He shows up after about a half an hour, making my pay per hour go down down down. Miraculously he arrives with the rest of the lost tourists. Two of the women on my tour from Canada, nothing too interesting about them except that the daughter is really attractive, and my heavy metal couple.

They inform me that upon entering the Sistine chapel they were approached by security and asked to remove their pentagram necklaces. They comply but then the man asks what he should do with his pentagram tattoo on his arm. He flashes it with pride to the guard, and they are subsequently escorted out of the museum complex. We get into a conversation about how silly the Catholic Church is because fill their churches with pagan art, but a pagan symbol on others is unheard of.

Needless to say I make minimal tips even though I worked an hour more than I was supposed to and all because St. Peter's was closed.