I went to the Metropolitan Museum yesterday afternoon to see "The Renaissance Portrait" exhibit. I strolled through the galleries, taking in the history of portraiture. It was soon after the Botticelli paintings of Florentine women that I began to get bored. I started walking quicker past paintings, skipping entire rooms of drawings, and soon found myself spit out of the exhibit. The thing I love about seeing anything in that particular exhibition space is that when you exit the space, you come out into the room containing the Met's Caravaggios. No matter if the exhibition was dull or fantastic, there is always this nice dessert awaiting you, Caravaggio's "The Musicians," probably my favorite painting in the museum. It is such an erotic painting for me. The expression on the lute player's face is the expression you see when you are in a bar late at night and you have been talking to a boy and it's clear the two of you are about to go home together and his lips part slightly in anticipation of what is soon to come. There is also something louche in his open hips that I had never noticed before, his legs spread open, a bit of his thigh visible at the bottom of the painting, one of the others musicians legs dangling between those open thighs. His fingers are adjusting the strings of the lute and it is not too difficult for my mind to replace that lute with something else, with a human body, mine, those fingers caressing me, playing me. There are the bared shoulders of the other musicians in the room, the tease of skin. I had to leave the museum, it all becoming too much.
It was Valentine's Day yesterday when I was looking at this painting. Perhaps that bares mentioning, perhaps it doesn't. I was horny, and that probably does indeed bare mentioning, perhaps explain why this painting was able to stir things in me even more than it usually is capable of, why I couldn't look at art any longer.
For dinner, Jacob and I went to Gwynnett St, did the Valentine's dinner out of the house again this year, despite it being what it always is, a room full of awkward couples on display, everyone a bit uncomfortable eating an unsatisfying overpriced prix-fixe menu. It didn't help that I was placed in the corner of the restaurant and literally had a view of the entire room, every table, every couple. It wasn't a flattering view. I didn't particularly like the design of the restaurant, something a bit off about it that I couldn't ever figure out. Our server was even more awkward than all the dates I kept watching, mumbling what every wine was, failing to bring wine often, and never once smiling the entire night. The food was so-so, which I was disappointed by. I had probably had too high of expectations given all the good buzz the place had been getting on Yelp. The dessert, however, was fantastic. All the fancy plating and fancy food techniques did little to add to the earlier courses, but the desserts we had were out of this world good. They were beautiful to look at and even better tasting.
Over the meal, Jacob and I talked about views of the stars at night in the Southwest, about taking a trip to DC soon, and about doing a West Coast road trip this summer. There was lots of dreaming, lots of the desire to run, to go other places, see this or that place. I think that if one were reading this narrative, if these were characters in a novel, say, and not my boyfriend and myself, I would say to myself that these two were unhappy where they were, unhappy with where their lives are at, and that that is why they are continually talking about traveling to other places. But since it is Jacob and myself, I will tell you that that is only partly the case, that following dinner, I had the most fun I have had in this city in a long time, and really loved my life and this place that I live in.
We went to Westway for a gay party happening there now, Westgay. Several hours later, we stumbled out of this bar near the West Side Highway sometime after 3 am, sweaty, drunk, and very happy. We let the night air cool us off and walked up to the L train to head back home to Brooklyn. I had danced and danced. There was amazing song after amazing song played. Whitney Houston's cover of "I'm Every Woman" came on at one point when we were near-ready to go, but I rushed to the dance floor, having to pay tribute by dancing my ass off to this song, and then from that point on it was jam after jam, each song better than the next, the two of us unable to leave because we just kept wanting to dance to every song. After this one, we'll leave. Bad Girls? Okay, after this one. Vogue? Oh shit, okay, after this one. Okay, no, really, this will be the last one. And on and on until physical exhaustion won out.
At home, we had drunk sex. We then ate a frozen pizza and watched Drag Race - all I really needed from Valentine's Day here in this sentence, my guy next to me, the two of us in the home we have made together in this city.
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