Gods Elevator

God… I am sick of the elevator scenes. The ones where the door opens and everybody looks at the new guy getting in, and inside there thinking why is this bitch slowing down my ride to the tenth floor. The way a man and woman are supposed to look so attractive to one another when the doors close and they are alone in this free floating dangle of cables and sheet metal. Oh, and the way that you greet people you know in real lift (not just lift life) when you meet them on the elevator. They are so damn jovial, saying their hullo and bye in sync with wrist watch glances and rubs of the collar.

Ill count out loud the times these presuppositions have come true for me… you ready?

. . . . . . . . . . . .

I meet walking dead people in the elevator. I meet hallucinating, barbituating, anti-depressanting people on the elevator. I meet the lifeblood of the city in this little elevator that skims up and down between basement and twenty seven floors above ground. I meet god as he waits for a ride, and looks disheveled when you open a shiny door for HIM! He says “floor 28”. I get the joke and roll with a grin, all the while with my thumb on the big ol’ button that will bring us to the top floor, to the ladder and to the roof.

This is the shit that happens when you share some crappy cognac with a homeless man, trade hats and go home a funnier and deeper person. It’s the experiential scar from looking down twenty seven flights of brick and hot metal, betting nickels on who is going to jump first, and reveling in the fickle breeze and cheap buzz.

“How did we get here” we say in unison, and we mean it in a fitting existential kind of way, but with rummy in the tummy we can’t help but think about that godforsaken elevator, its bad tinny music and sticky buttons. So another laugh from the peanut gallery and were on our backs, counting stars, rearranging our ladder rungs and faking a strait face when we chant “we believe in society”.