Goodbye Bat-cave

It isn’t the space that I will miss, though I will miss the place. I have not lived there in two years.

It is everything the space represented. It was my dream place. And in it housed some of my favourite memories. Family and friends over for dinner and drinks. Welcoming Taylor into my life. Every day there felt like Christmas Day.

I loved everything about 659 West Randolph / Chicago, IL… the struggle getting it… the joys of living it… the sadness leaving it.

All of it seems like yesterday. And in a blink of an eye, it was all gone, again – left with memories.

I remember telling my friend, who was my realtor after showing me almost a hundred places over the course of a year, before his patience finally relented. “Cecil, what the hell do you want?!?!”

“Dude, you’re gonna laugh. And even if I told you, I don’t even know such a place exists.”

“Try me.”

Crickets.

“Well, I want to feel like I’m living in Gotham City.”

“Wow, you are a really weird guy,” Jay responded in his classic Chicago accent.

“I never said I wasn’t.”

“Well now we know what you want. That only took a year. Hahaha.” His laugh sounded like Heath Ledger’s Joker.

Our struggle wasn’t over with that conversation. It was only beginning. One day which seemed to capture the sentiment of our journey for me to find my bat-cave, we looked at condos for hours on a Sunday. I was hobbling, having fallen the day before at a concert.

“You sure you’re up for this, Cecil?”

Of course I was. I am The Dark Knight.

The next day, I limped to the airport for a week of meetings with my team and our clients in New York. By Friday, I was back and later that day found out I had broken my foot the week before, wearing a (Batman) boot for following month to let my foot heal.

Soon I did find my place. I knew it the moment I walked into the living room as the day was giving way to the night. Floor-to-ceiling windows along an entire wall facing north with views east and west gave me a stunning view of the Chicago skyline, with lights from the cars filling the traffic below on the highway directly west of my view, while the sun set.

I had found my bat-cave.
And I was living in Gotham City. I had never left.

For the closing, as a present and an homage to what I was searching for, my realtor bought me a Batman mask and cowl. I wore it for almost the entire hour signing closing documents.

I spent that first night with no furniture save for a thermarest that I unfolded, a pillow and a blanket set against the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the city, falling asleep on the floor.

The Batman had taken a hold of his Bat-cave.

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Go Adventure. Go Travel. Go Live.

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