The Girl at the Museum

In the days when the building was erected, it was customary for men to sail from Nantucket on the Atlantic coast all the way to the middle of the Pacific in what, by today’s standards, would be considered precarious vessels. Thousands of miles away, deprived of communication with the terrestrial world, they would locate, track down and manually harpoon adult sperm whales with enough precision to puncture their hearts. A long rope attached to the harpoon would be tethered to the small boat used for this maneuver, and the velocities they reached while being pulled with great force by such a giant, terrified animal just before the end of its life I do not know. The men would then somehow haul the massive carcass aboard the main ship and process one of the most valuable commodities of their time - whale oil- which they would ultimately store in wooden barrels. The fact that the gruesome work shifts would often last well over a year and that they did everything without access to electricity or any subsequent technology, of course, might be difficult for the modern man - who needs but the flip of a switch to summon light - to fully appreciate. The point here, however, is merely to illustrate that the aforementioned building was old. Built in the early 1800, its lamps did burn whale oil. Its appearance, nonetheless, was immaculate; recently painted and well maintained, it stood rather imposing amid peculiar palm like trees somewhere in San Francisco, and its most recent iteration was as a museum.

Kenny had seen it multiple times in his nineteen years, conspicuous as it was among the more modern architectural structures surrounding it, but never did he have any desire to find out just what might lay inside its doors. On that particular Tuesday afternoon, however, he felt compelled to be inside the place, although he could not discern why. An inexplicable need to change the status of the unknown. The place had always been there, but this time it would have been impossible not to enter it.

Standing at about 5 feet, 9 inches tall with short brown hair and a clean-cut appearance, Kenny could mistakenly be taken for an “average young man”- if there were such a thing, that is, if each individual were not so unique as to be considered by some “a universe within himself’ and things along those lines, with dreams and peculiarities often so wild he would dare not tell a soul. He was fond of dogs and computer games, filial to his parents, not yet particularly skilled in interpersonal relationships and was attending college to become an engineer. He knocked on one of the pair of great wooden doors somewhat hesitantly.

The doors opened to reveal a young woman whom Kenny knew right away, was unlike any he had yet encountered. “Hello.” she said with a smile. She wore a coat, skirt and long boots in such a fashion that her dignified figure was in no way diminished by the exposure of several inches of perfectly shaped thighs. “Hi.”- replied Kenny, announcing that he would like to visit the museum. “This is the oldest home of Western civilization. I don’t know why it took you so long” she replied, her eyes glimmering. A long pony tail slid through her hand like a black waterfall. Kenny’s brain started working in complex ways, wildly sending a rush of chemicals throughout his body that effectively deprived the young man from the ability to speak when he tried, and made him feel like his bones were turning into gelatin, then mayonnaise. She proceeded to show him around.

Her gait was mesmerizing. Her hips did not swing too far laterally like some girls’, neither did she walk crossing her feet like others do, often in a way that looks contrived. Neither were her feet over-pronated, with knees caving in - another pattern all too common, particularly among females with wider hips. Instead, she appeared to glide in perfect harmony with gravity - effortlessly. Her spine was perfectly straight, but she wasn’t pinning her shoulders back, neither were they rounded forward. She was expressive - but not exaggerated. The content and inflection in her speech denoted intelligence and a rare emotional equilibrium, although she did not appear to have seen more than twenty-three or twenty-four summers. She looked as though her delicate features were the result of a long lineage of queens and princesses somewhere in the East. In the days when men were hunting for whales, Kenny mused, her ancestors were doing whatever it may be that royal people did, being served by multiple maids and completely abstaining from any form of manual labor for generations, resulting in their very bone structure becoming more delicate than that of the average person. At the same time, she somehow seemed ready to wield a sword, or daggers - or some other deadly weapon - with great proficiency and at a moment’s notice, like in a kung fu movie. These thoughts and many more went through Kenny’s mind, and most he would never be able to translate into such limited tools as words.

“See, Kenny, as a species we performed bloodletting as a medical treatment for three thousand years, then we stopped, and now it is starting to make a comeback. Something as abominable as slavery was a legal practice until very recently from an evolutionary perspective. We think we know better, but do we? What we do know is that the Homo Sapiens struggles with anxiety or depression, or both, and is to some extent free to choose how he deals with it. But do we really have free will or are we merely being funneled into this reality, fulfilling some master plan?” she asked, then looked at Kenny and smiled. Behind them, a few miles northeast, the top one-third of the Salesforce Tower was the only visible structure above a thick, low layer of fog. The sight was glorious: the glass and steel shining in the sun and the appearance of a building rising from a cloud made it look like it was the year three thousand and people would start flying by at any moment, with wings or some other technology, their problems with depression and anxiety a thing of the past.

“But tell me, Kenny. What do you want to know?” - she inquired, uttering the “you” with such vehemence that it was too much for the young lad. Kenny gagged, looked at his watch, looked at her feet and stuttered “I-I gotta go home now.”

And so he left, although he would never be able to rationally explain why. He knew his hasty departure had been a mistake, and he was going to correct it. That was all that mattered. He was going back and he was going to talk to her. At the same time the following day, Kenny knocked on the old wooden door again, his physiology eliciting the same disastrous concoctions that ravaged any sense of poise he had achieved twenty-four hours prior. When the doors opened his heart sank: he was met by a different host this time. A man with white hair, square glasses and a peaceful smile said with gentility, “Good afternoon! How can I help you today, young man?”

“The — the girl from yesterday,” Kenny muttered. “Is she here?”

“I beg your pardon?”, the other said, perplexed. Kenny described the girl, mentioning that she had taken him on a tour the day before. The old man tilted his head in a confused manner: “That’s impossible. I have been the only person working here for two decades now, and we are closed on Tuesdays. There was no one here yesterday.”

“But…,” Kenny looked around. Everything militated in favor of the veracity of the aged gentleman’s story - an “hours of operation” sign, the setting, the scene. With nothing left to do, the men bade farewell and Kenny started down the street, but after several paces he felt inexplicably compelled to look back at the old building. As he did so, to his surprise, there she was. Behind one of the full-height glass windows, pony tail, bare thighs, smiling and looking right at him. She winked, a green light flashed for a split second in the room and in the blink of an eye she was gone, Kenny knew, for good.

As he continued down the street, he pondered her last words- “What do you want to know?”- and smiled. There was a lot to learn about this world indeed. One could claim that it is often cruel and unfair alright, but that same person would be forced to concede that it also contains a measure of undeniable raw beauty, and is also by no means a boring place. A few miles away, the Salesforce Tower glimmered in the afternoon sun.