I checked over my shoulder. Wall. Door. Darkness. I looked at Valerio. Cute boy. Soft, full lips. Lips that were their own art form. That deserved an entire exhibit. This whole thing was crazy, I realized, but why should a place dictate where we can and can’t be ourselves? So I kissed him. Deliberately. No shame.

Even if it turned out I would never see the Sistine Chapel, I would have experienced that kiss, and it felt just as important as all these statues and painted ceilings.

Just as suddenly, Valerio pulled back and swooped around the door, tugging me with him into the next exhibit. “You tease,” I said, my heart racing. Another part of me throbbing. We were walking like fools. “You and this whole museum.”

We approached a golden door at the end of the hall. This has to be it, I thought to myself. This has to be the Sistine Chapel.

Bamboozled again. It was a darker, more crowded hall with tapestries on the wall. No one was stopping to appreciate the intricate maps of the old world sewn into these cloths; we were all just shuffling through, rushing to the main event. I felt kind of bad that all these exhibits weren’t getting any love.

“This must be what it feels like to open for Beyoncé,” I said.

“Worse,” Valerio said. “It is like if Beyoncé were opening for God.”

Somehow, there was another long hall, this one with an even more spectacularly painted ceiling. But not spectacular enough, because it still wasn’t the Sistine Chapel. The Catholic Church was doing the most here.

“This place needs a fast pass,” I grumbled.

“It will all be worth it,” Valerio reassured. “Remember what Goethe said?”

“Yeah, well, Goethe skipped a lot of steps.”

Valerio shook his head. “You impatient Americans.”

We sped through multiple chambers dedicated to Raphael, a contemporary art museum, the Hall of Animals. I imagined the marble zebras and lions coming to life, like the National Zoo gone wild. Maybe I was hallucinating; I hadn’t had any water in hours.

Then I saw it. A big red sign at the top of a nondescript staircase: CAPPELLA SISTINA. This one was different from all the others. This one was real.

“Valerio,” I whispered.

Slowly, we shuffled toward the sign, and as we passed through the door, I was expecting some kind of earth-shifting change. After all that buildup, I was expecting fireworks, laser beams, an entire spectacle.

It was a dark, cool room. It was crowded.

Valerio nudged me. “Look up.”

The first thing I saw was the iconic Michelangelo image: God and Adam, heavenly homies, with their hands reaching out, fingers barely touching.

“Holy shit,” I said.

“Holy shit, indeed,” Valerio said.

My eyes pinged everywhere. These people, these painted figures, pale-skinned and bare and robed, holy, human, a collective fantasy, another world. High above. It all came to life before my eyes.

It was the biggest party in the world.

It was the most important room in the world.