06.29.03
Mike and I made plans last week to go to a museum sometime this weekend. Which museum, and which day weren't decided.
After some conversation, we decided that a trip to the Art Institute on Sunday sounded good. I hadn't been to that place since I was 19, so I was sure that there was a lot of stuff that would be new and interesting to see.
Mike was supposed to call me this afternoon around noon, and we would then discuss when and where to meet. He called me before 11, and wanted to know if I wanted to get breakfast.
I told him that I had already eaten, which was a patent lie. I was intending to have a delicious nectarine mango banana yogurt smoothie for breakfast, because the banana wasn't going to last another day, and I really thought it sounded tasty (which it was -- even tastier than I thought!). So I lied.
I told him that I would call him when I got downtown -- sometime around 1 or 1:30, and would discuss where exactly to meet then. Around 1, while on the CTA, my phone rang with a call from Mike, wanting to know where I was, and to let me know that he was already downtown, enjoying something to drink on Adams somewhere. We agreed that I would call him when I got to the museum, and that we would meet there.
Predictably, I ran into him on the way to the museum.
Damn that place has changed. I remember when you used to just give them some money at the desk, they gave you a receipt, and you walked on in. Now they've got extra shows that you have to get tickets for, and you have to queue up to buy a ticket into the museum, then show the ticket to some disinterested woman that is talking to another disinterested looking woman behind a podium of some sort. And I think I offended Mike by insisting on paying for my own ticket.
We started off in minature rooms, where he informed me that the last girl he'd been there with spent three hours examining each display, which made me feel bad about wanting to examine them in detail but not in a forever kind of way. After getting out of there, we then moved on to architecture, where I told Mike about some stuff I knew on the topic, and he really didn't seem interested. Then we walked into the area with the old paintings, and he made some vaguely negative-sounding comment about how all of the art was religious. I explained to him all about the significance of religious art during certain eras, pointed out how you could tell different regional styles of painting, and noted when styles changed and art became more secular in nature. I was attempting to make it a little more interesting for him, because he honestly looked really bored.
We wandered through modern art, where I jokingly revealed that the only Picasso I cared for was Paloma, because she designed jewelry for Tiffany & Co, although I thought it was vaguely interesting that Picasso and Braque worked together in a studio in the early days of Cubism, and since neither of them initially signed their works, even they were unable to tell who had done which pieces, so today there are probably Braques attributed to Picasso and likewise. I pointed out some tidbits here and there that I thought he might find interesting. I told him about Kandinsky and Blue Horse, and how I didn't really care for Miro and Mondrian, although I had a dress that had a Mondrian-esque motif. He told me he didn't like O'Keefe, and I told him that the basement in the high school I went to was painted to resemble one of the O'Keefe paintings on display. We skipped the rooms with the Impressionist art, because if I take another trip through Manet/Monet/Seurrat-land, I'm going to snap.
I wish we hadn't missed the Magritte and Dali, though. I generally like DaDa and Surrealism. Especially the trompe l'oleil pieces.
I don't know, maybe I rambled on about stuff because he didn't seem interested in the art itself. He even leaned on one of the pillars that was holding a piece of art and was chastised by one of the blue-jacketed ladies standing about and telling people not to touch the art.
He wanted to look at the Asian art, so we went over to the bits with the Indian stuff, where he informed me that he didn't like statuary. All of the Indian art was statuary. We didn't spend a lot of time there. We wandered through the Middle Eastern and Egyptian stuff, and into the Roman and Greek art, which was mostly vessels, jewelry and coins. From there we visited reliquaries and other religious art, which he whipped through and missed the coolness of the stuff in the cases. We looked at the modern furniture and housewares stuff, I talked about the different designers and pointed out a Barcelona chair by Mies van der Rohe, and told him you could still buy them new. I told him that Ray and Charles Eames were a husband and wife team. I rambled.
He kept asking me if I was hungry, and finally I told him I was tired of looking at art, and wanted to look through the gift shop before heading out. Everything was ugly or expensive, and the children's t-shirts there suck a great deal as they pander to the grandparents of the world instead of being tiny replicas of the adult-sized tees that only come in L/XL/XXL.
He works downtown, so I asked him where was a good place to eat, and he told me that he didn't want to eat somewhere that he normally ate at, so I picked a place at random, which turned out to be unremarkable pub fare. I wanted to stay for dessert, but he wanted to get a coffee or something somewhere, so we left. I let him pick up dinner.
We walked around until we found a Starbucks and got coffee/chai/cobbler. He refused dessert in favor of strict coffee, and tried to pay for everything, but I had my Starbuck's card out already, and picked up the tab. While complaining about how the coffee was too hot, he told me that he thought he had insomnia because he wasn't sleeping so well. I told him to stop drinking caffeine, although I suspected it was more the fact that he goes out every night, and even though he is asleep by midnight, he has to get up at 5:30am to go to work. That will fuck a sleep schedule, living like that.
It was after 6, and Starbucks was kicking people out, so we went outside. Mike asked me if I wanted to go to a movie or something, and I told him that I actually just wanted to go home. Then he asked if I wanted to watch a movie at my place. I told him that I was really more interested in watching a little television by myself, and I wasn't sure that he got the clue, so I said that I should take the Red Line home, and asked where the Blue Line (his train) picked up. He said it was a couple of blocks west of where the Red Line picked up, so I suggested that we walk that way, and gave him a hug before I went down into the subway. He asked me if I had plans this week, and I told him for some of the days yes, for others no. He said he'd call me later in the week, and I said okay. Then we parted.
Again, I don't mean to make him sound like a jerk or something. I just don't think that we click romantic-like. He doesn't like television and doesn't have a television, or a car, and he likes to go to live shows and bars on a regular basis. He hates the 80's. He hates the music, movies, and general culture of the 80's. I consider myself a child of the 80's, I love television as a cheap alternative to going out on a regular basis, and I honestly think that going out to a show should be a special occasion kind of thing, and not an everyday affair.
And I don't understand why he would ask me if I wanted to go do something time and detail intensive, like going to an art musuem, that he obviously had no interest in doing.
In fact, when we were initially setting this whole thing up, I told him the hours for the museum, which CTA stop went to the museum, how much admission cost, and said that I'd visited their website for all this info. And on the topic of visiting websites for info, purely as an aside, I mentioned that I'd gone to Shedd's and Field's websites to find out how much the Wild Reef and Egyptian Antiquities tickets were, and had found out that as a Chicago resident, I'd get a substantial discount on both admissions. He already knew that on my vacation, I wanted to visit both these exhibits, so I thought he'd think that was cool. Instead, he got all fidgety-sounding and asked me almost accusingly whether or not I really wanted to go to the Art Institure, or would I rather go to see one of the other museums. Sheesh.
At least he didn't try to kiss me.
What's in your head?