Mon 17 Jan 2011
Museum Buddy (Part 2)
Posted by ShazamChi under True Story.
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[Continued from "Museum Buddy (Part 1)."]
The guy who wanted to go to museums responded to me. He said that he had decided that I was interesting and that he and I should be friends. I didn’t learn until later that his decision was based on having Googled me. Googling me comes up with my Twitter stream and this blog, so I think that’s a good way to weed out the wimps; if you can’t handle that I write about sex and such then we needn’t be friends. At the same time, I am more than this blog or my Twitter stream.
I gave him my number and he called me. Though he woke me up we had a decent conversation and I thought – without Googling him – that we could be friends. He lived relatively close to me, but even closer to the fancy Whole Foods in the neighborhood, which we both agreed was ridiculous but nice to have around. We made plans to go to the Field Museum.
He picked me up and drove to the museum. The Field Museum is near Soldier Field and shares its very large parking structure. We had some trouble getting out of the structure because it was so large. But make it out of the parking structure and into the museum we did.
The museum was big and … old. The taxidermy looked like it was done about a hundred years ago. Sue, the museum’s T. rex, literally had cobwebs on her. That’s Sue there, and I purposely avoided getting cobwebs in the shot. The exhibits looked sad and sorely outdated.
My new friend and I commented on the various characteristics that looked ridiculous to us, but were all in furtherance of getting laid, nature’s great motivator.
We went through pretty quickly, but only the parts of the museum that were included in the regular admission. The Field Museum has exhibits that cost in addition to the general admission but since we weren’t that impressed with what we saw we didn’t want to pay more to be further disappointed.
My favorite part was the room with various kinds of gems. When I was a kid, my step-mother got a lot of Time-Life books on various subjects. One of my favorite ones to look at and read was on gems.
My new friend asked if I wanted to look at real estate porn with him. Then he corrected himself because real estate porn is what he does online. We were going to a real estate strip club, a staged apartment in a fancy high rise building not far from the museum. Sure, I like looking at apartments.
We were going to say we were a couple and were looking for a place for us, but he decided to go with his old standby and say he was looking for a place for his parents. The agent asked him his price range and he said he didn’t have one, after which she became significantly friendlier.
She kept saying that the building was very complicated and it was hard to explain. It’s a tall building with a lot of apartments, what’s so difficult about that? Of course each apartment is different. Of course the higher floors have a lot less square footage than the lower floors. I’m no architect, but I understand that high rises have some unique issues in a place known for wind and snow and such, and I’m pretty sure my new friend, also not an architect but well-educated and not a moron, knew that, too.
I wanted to see the naked girls … er, the staged apartment. Finally, after a lot of talk about the uniqueness of the building, we were in said building’s elevator being whisked up to the 50th floor.
The apartment was huge. The kitchen was giant. I liked the size of the kitchen – plenty of room for an island – and its fancy Wolf stove and Sub-Zero refrigerator, but the cabinets were absolutely hideous. They were of good quality – had the hinges that shut the drawers and cabinets softly – but the finish was a horrible distressed eggshell white. If I was to pay over a million dollars for a place the kitchen had better not look tacky.
The view was lovely and included the Field Museum, Soldier Field, and Lake Michigan to the east and Grant Park to the north; I’m sure at night it was beautiful. Sadly, the “neighborhood” around the building was all high rises; to get to anything one would need a car, so I guess the Viking and I won’t be taking the place.
My new friend (nickname forthcoming) dropped me at home. He let me keep the tote bag he got from the museum for becoming a member. I haven’t heard from him, but hopefully we’ll be hanging out at another museum in the city.
I swear. True story.
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