The Elevator Rides Of Our Lives
It’s raining today in Southern California and so, as I stared out into the sogginess this wet, grey afternoon, my thoughts naturally turned towards tertiary syphilis.
No they didn’t. They turned towards lifts* (elevators); all the lifts I’ve known. Elevators pop up in my life (and down – for, after all, what pops up must pop down) at highly-wrought/unusual/important moments. I think it’s the nature of elevators to do this to everyone. To be on an elevator you are often on your way to somewhere in a building big or important enough to have an elevator: an appointment; an interview etc. A lot of emotion happens in lifts whether you are alone or not.
Here are some things I’ve thought – sometimes out loud – in elevator situations (different ones):
I hope I am dressed appropriately for this occasion. I wonder if there’ll be anything to drink.
*
I hope I’m not barren.
*
………..Oh! So THAT’S what he meant. Damn, see then I should have said _________ (insert something retrospectively pithy and devastatingly smart.)
*
OK, this is it. Play it cool, Samigirl. Keep your head. You can do it yes you can yes you CAN!
*
Weep, weep, weep oh!oh!oh! weep, weep, weep. Oh, yes , I could use a tissue, thank-you, you’re very kind. Nope, I’m fine, it’s fine. No really. Boohoohoohoohoo.
*
A ladder! Damn! Will there be anything to drink, I wonder?
*
It can’t be about the essay. Oh God. I wonder if he wants an affair! Everybody says he’s a right letch and this is the classic way it’s done, isn’t it? An email with a cryptic message; last tutorial spot of the day….What will I do if he makes a move? Can I knee him? What if I get nervous and knee him before he’s even done anything? Would he fail me for that?
Same elevator, 15 minutes later, somewhat puzzled at my own slight sense of anti-climax: I wonder what an affair would be like? God, What am I thinking? Stopitstopitstopit! What’s wrong with me??
Several floors down and indignantly, Well, what IS wrong with me? Why DIDN’T he try and seduce me? I know for a fact he’s tried it on with L. He tries it on with everyone! Mutter.
(It’s true. I do mutter in my thoughts, and I rhubarb too.)
*
Ow! Ow! (hospital elevator)
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Mmmmmmmmmmmm! Oh Golly!
Several floors later: It’s always the quiet ones, isn’t it…Oooooh! My word!
*
No inner dialogue. Nothing; only the sounds of perspiration beading on my forehead, on the back of my neck, and my stomach twisting stickily, sickily into a Gordion knot for which there can be no unwinding, only the sword’s slice. For it is written.
*
8…9…10…11… pause… where’s 12? Oh my God I’m stuck in here! I’m going to die die I tell me DIE! …12…13…14… Idiot. Mutter.
*
67…68…69…This is boring and I have to stand way too close to shorts-wearing people I don’t know. Eeew! I can practically feel their leg hair. Why did I have to wear shorts too? … Oh! My ears popped! Ooh, I LOVE this!… 70…71…
*
I wonder if there’ll be something to drink.
*
I wonder if there’ll be something to eat/drink.
*
* For trans-Atlantic equity I’ve used the terms interchangeably for the duration length of the post.
PS: If anyone’s looking for something new to listen to, get yourself a copy of this. Carla Bruni is a French/Italian supermodel but don’t let that put you off. In this album she’s put poems by Auden, Dickinson, Yeats, C. Rossetti, Parker and De La Mare to music. It’s a quiet album and her voice adds alternately wistfulness, melancholy and a breathy haunting quality to the songs. I like it a lot. It sounds like a terrible idea to have a supermodel sing poetry to her own music but I think it works out well. In America it’s only available as an import at the moment and the price is therefore a bit steep, but it’s the same price as everything else in Europe. Definitely worth it, in my humble.
February 23rd, 2007 at 9:03 am
“I hope he doesn’t fart” might be the thought of someone living in the present.
How distressing to hear you cry in a lift, Sam. I offer you a retrospective hug. It wasn’t that lecturer who broke your heart was it?
February 23rd, 2007 at 9:12 am
I’ll let you in on the secret. There is no point to the joke. You tell people the first one (the architect) and then you tell them the meaning (house made/maid). Then the assume the second one must have a meaning too. It drives the fuckers mad. Good to use with people who think they’re cleverer than you – ie men. The bigger the arsehole they are the more they’ll try and work it out. Try it.
Even a small dragon is nevertheless a dragon. I’m petty.
February 23rd, 2007 at 11:29 am
that reminds me of the most devastating experience in a lift I had… we were four people in a tiny little one in a hotel, stuck for 2 hours until they came and opened the damn fishcan, 30 minutes after that happened we decided to have a cigarette to calm the claustrophobia down and all of us, smokers, rrealised we don’t have lighters, or matches, or at least two stones…
haven’t been so dissapointed with myself, ever…
February 23rd, 2007 at 1:33 pm
I got trapped in a lift in a hotel in New York, by myself. Linzi and my mates had gone ahead because I had forgotten my jacket. Being an optimist, I thought there had been a terrorist attack. It was the most frightening eight minutes of my life.
February 23rd, 2007 at 2:09 pm
Something to do in an elevator when you’re bored:
1. Refuse to turn around and face the doors after you’ve entered. (Just count the “dings” and back out at your floor.
2. If you’re looking for a laugh, wait until the doors clothes and then say, “Now that we’re all here, I think we can get started.”
Cheers.
February 23rd, 2007 at 6:53 pm
I absolutely hate when I don’t get a joke on the spot, and I’m in a lift or out of the building when it dawns on me. Makes me feel like an idiot.
You neglected to mention the most immature lift moment possible: laughing when someone just can’t hold it in and let’s off the worst fart possible.
Despite the fact that, legally, I’m an adult, I still find things like that funny. Sometimes.
February 23rd, 2007 at 7:45 pm
Nanas, no sweetie. You’re concern is lovely though. And, if I might, I will retrospectively accept that large hairy hug.
Orla, aah, I see. Thank God for that! I was alarmed at not being able to work it out.
Jenpen, that must have been a bonding experience for you all. What did you do to pass the time? Did you tell secrets, thinking you were about to perish? Were you ever able to look each other in the eye again?
Kav, I’ll bet it was. I haven’t been to New York since 9/11 but I’d probably run screaming into the street if I as much as heard a microwave ping. To a seasoned New Yorker that would mean a warm, delicious snack was on its way. To me it would mean almost certain death. I don’t know how New Yorkers operate rationally on a daily basis any more. I guess you just get used to danger. It’s a triumph of the human spirit how people manage to maintain a certain day-to day normality in places like Baghdad and Tikrit and wherever wounds are still raw from an attack. Meh, I’m a screamer in the street. There’s probably good extra-work in that, mind you – Hollywood’s not that far from here…
Rand, I pictured you as I read the lift japes. It made me smile.
Dario, ah, but see, much as I would like to be able to tell the story, I’ve never been in a lift when someone’s farted. It’s just never happened. I have to content myself with giggling over that Peter Sellers clip.
February 23rd, 2007 at 7:49 pm
I once farted as I walked into a lift, the only other occupant a man just starred at me until we reached our floor, I avoided eye contact and pretended it never happened well I was convinced.
February 23rd, 2007 at 8:13 pm
spending two hours in a lift cannot make me confess my dreams and my sins. but I had learned a lesson and since then I always have two lighters in my purse.
what we did to have the time run faster was to play “movie trivia” – someone says the alphabet and when someone else says “stop”, everyone have to tell a movie title with that letter – this was the time when I realised I could beat imdb.com in a blink;)
February 24th, 2007 at 6:42 am
For a real treat, try the freight elevator in the Library Tower, Downtown LA. Scares the shite out of me. Huge fucken thing, sways from side to side as it goes up or down. It’s fitted with a used thruster unit from Saturn 5 for maximum thrills. You can smell the afterburn, or you can after I’ve been in it.
February 24th, 2007 at 12:45 pm
Elevators are very awkward places. Luckily my office elevators are equipped with small televisions which means you can blankley stare at the screen and never have to make eye contact with your fellow riders. Of course this can pose its own set of unique problems. For example: When the ridership is co-ed and one of those, uh-hmmm, male performance enhancement commercials come on. At times like these it’s difficult to know just where to divert your eyes and god forbid someone starts to giggle.
February 25th, 2007 at 7:29 am
It’s incredible how we human beings can convince ourselves sometimes that nothing has happened and nothing is wrong despite all evidence to the contrary. Look at the White House. The pong of incompetency in there is eye-watering but everybody pretends it was Barney.
Jen, we used to do something similar with world-capitals. Often with vodka. The thing about movies is that there are so many that I’d never know if someone was just making one up.
Eddie, I might try that. LA’s not so far away. I’m not much of a one for rollercoasters and the like – it’s the searing terror that puts me off, see – but I can only recall being terrified by one horror movie whose central premise was an evil killing lift, so who knows? One of these sunny days i might just go down there and shake things up a little, blow the cobwebs away, imperil my very being.
Joel, but how do you know the small televisions aren’t watching you…? Have you seen the latest ED commercial? (They always put them on around the news time for some reason.) The couple in the matching bathtubs on top of a mountain? What are they doing in bathtubs on top of a mountain? It looks cold, and that can’t be to a gentleman’s advantage for starters.
February 25th, 2007 at 3:28 pm
Sam…so what you’re saying is I probably should stop making the obscene gestures to the small televisions in the elevator? Prudent suggestion. I know exactly what you mean about those ED commercials. Each time I see them I do two things…a) thank the heavens that I can’t actually relate to what they’re talking about; and b) offer the suggestion that if they were to allow the couple a warmer environment there might be no problem at all…but then I realize if there were no problem what would be the point of the commercial. Oh well.
February 25th, 2007 at 4:44 pm
I was once stuck in a lift with a bunch of colleagues. One of them calmly lifted the emergency phone, dialled his secretary, and dictated a letter to her.
He was Dutch. I don’t know whether this has anything to do with it.
February 25th, 2007 at 7:54 pm
I once had to explode a lift to kill several terrorists, no wait they might have been a film.
February 25th, 2007 at 10:56 pm
I always sing to myself when I’m alone in the lift, then stop when the door opens and someone comes in and have a terrible guilty look on my face, so people get suspicious. I didn’t fart, I was singing!
February 26th, 2007 at 5:53 pm
I have spent many a good lift ride snogging. It’s the only way to travel in them.
February 26th, 2007 at 5:59 pm
One of my best friends conceived her son in a lift. I assume there was only her and the father-to-be in the lift at the time. It was either the fastest conception in history or they just kept pressing the button as the building only had three floors.
February 26th, 2007 at 6:10 pm
any time I enter the lift since I read that, Sami, I think what could happen now…damn obsession, reminds me of the novel about the guy that had wonderful beard… and was asked where! he puts it when he goes to sleep – above the cover or under it – thinking of that he had several sleepless nights and finally he shaved.
shall I use the stairs instead????
February 26th, 2007 at 6:31 pm
I was visiting my sister in New York ,left her at her office at an astronical floor and then was then let loose on New York. I was scared s——s and it was such a vast emporioum considered going up and down in the lift all day. Finally girded my loins and the first person I asked directions from was a Brit!
Re farts: try keeping your face straight when you are on stage and someone farts in the front row. Fartuitously it was a comedy. One can control one’s face apparently, but not one’s eyes.
February 27th, 2007 at 1:29 am
Joel – apparantly “in rare circumstances” the effects can linger for 4 hours after which you have to consult a medical person. Still, it’s the top selling medication in America. I guess the benefits must outweight the risk!
Aunty M, for the most liberal peoples in Europe the Dutch are surprisingly efficient. They get stuff done. Who says pot-smokers aren’t productive?
Old Knudsen. It was a film. You were shot through the flat-cap by a terrorist who was scared of lifts and had taken the stairs. Siskel and Ebert said your performance was sensitive and nuanced as far as they could tell through the censor’s bleep-outs.
Carolyn – keep singing! The new lift-rider could be an agent who, after a day’s auditions, is convinced he won’t find the next starlet in Port Moresby and is having a terrible day. Until, that is, he steps into a lift and hears a voice so sweet and melodic it causes the flowers on his ill-chosen tie to open and butterflies to fly out of his ears. And both your lives are changed forever. Keep singing!
fmc, snogging should be part of everyone’s life lift experiences. I was staying in a hotel in Leeds last year on my way to a wedding. In the morning I was on my way down for an early breakfast when the lift door on my floor opened and a flushed and dishevelled couple giggled their way out having obviously just had a good old rummage. They were in their 50s and probably having an affair but all the same, it was very sweet.
Fluffag, well, some button somewhere was certainly getting pressed! I guessed the earth, or the floor at least, moved for them. Will they ever go back for old times’ sake, as it *cough* were?
Jen, keep taking the lift – worse things happen in stairwells than in elevators, if Robert De Nero movies are anything to go by.
Pat, ha! That’s great! What happened to your eyes? Did they widen in astonishment, or wince, or merely water in the vapours?
February 28th, 2007 at 9:12 pm
You’ve forgotten the long hate-filled dialogue to your cell phone as it loses reception at the precise moment the door closes. I seethe just thinking about it. Seethe. And it’s all so counter-productive.
March 1st, 2007 at 1:12 pm
Great piece Sam. I immediately though of the Peter Sellers out take, where he has to fart in a lft, but they all keep cracking up.
I like the sweet wee French apartment lifts with their lovely wrought iron gates, but they usually smell of cat pee.
The film The Apartment makes great use of lifts, and its one of my fav movies ever.
The Empire State Building lift feels like you’rr travelling in the Space Shuttle.
Going up…….. first floor haberdashery…..