The Elevator

 Today, I walked into the elevator and it smelled of urine.

Yesterday, I walked into the elevator and it smelled of skunk week.

The day before, I walked into the elevator and it smelled like bleach.

As I head to the parking lot, elevator smells were not what I expected to be thinking about every day as I leave my new job. After 8 years of the same building – albeit one time completely gutted for construction, a year and a half of COVID-19 working at different desks in different buildings, and three different office spaces, I don’t remember ever smelling the elevator unless I farted in it.

Now, walking closer to my car, I start to think about things I’ve done in an elevator…

·       Pushed all the buttons as I was leaving it

·       Kissing a bunch of women

·       Staring at the floors instead of people in them

·       Barfed

·       Jumped before it hit the final floor

·       Looked at people’s butts

·       Watched people make out

·       Watched people pick their noses

·       Watched a dude pick his ass

·       Stepped on a dirty diaper

·       Listened to elevator music

·       Listened to non-elevator music

·       Asked former NFL quarterback Phil Simms is his son was going to Alabama for college

·       Farted… a lot

·       Smiled as I was leaving a job for the last time

·       Frowned after being laid off from a job

·       Wondered if the gymnastics team would come back to my hotel room for a beer? Answer – no.

·       Held a drunk girl that I was falling in love with

·       Written down quotes or scenes on scraps of paper or notepads

·       Forgotten what room I was in

·       Wondered what it looks like at the top of the World Trade Center

·       Talked

·       Yelled

·       Laughed

·       Cried

·       Contemplated suicide

·       Contemplated a first move

·       Chickened out on a first move

·       Seen blood

·       Seen poop

·       Seen most likely semen

·       Been stuck in one – twice

·       Ate food

·       Drank beer

·       Drank soda

·       Drank water

·       Broke a bottle of Jim Beam – full

·       Mouthed I love you to a complete stranger after she left on a different floor

·       Wondered what I’d do if the door opened and it was hell

·       Never given an elevator pitch

·       Looked at myself in the reflection of fake brass and not being impressed

·       Thought about peeing

·       Been annoyed

·       Been intrigued

·       Been speechless

You get the picture. Nothing too exciting has ever happened to me in an elevator. Certainly, I’ve never been Steven Tyler.

I almost feel like a Samoan who showed up to be in the Price Is Right the day after Bob Barker retired. Whatever that means.

I thought a lot about nothing when something was on my mind.

Take it or leave it when I already lost it.

Eating when I’m not hungry. Starving when I’m full.

Stale cookies full of almond joy wrappers on the curb.

A Styrofoam copy of the bible.

Being cast in Hellraiser 7 on vacation to Burbank.

I saw her standing there and I wasn’t thinking so I sat down and watched until she left. Dustin Hoffman asked me if I was going to come back tomorrow. I said sure. But I didn’t.

 

On the next day’s news, she was struck by a bus. Would I have stopped it from happening? Probably not, I once saw a girl get run over by a bus in college. A few weeks later, I met her and kind of fell in love.

 

I say kind of because I told her I loved her, but she never told me. A whole lot of sadness, a whole lot of regret. But not a whole lot of courage. Maybe that should be the opening of my book, not “I should have never left New Orleans.” But that one has been the one since I uttered those words in Austin, Texas during a doomed bachelor’s bachelor’s party.

 

I wish I’d check out the locations for the Clash’s video when I was there. Pre gentrification. Most, if not all are rubble and memory now.

 

I wonder what it will feel like when I’m just a memory. I guess I could write a letter and ask. But does that instantly make me no longer a memory and ruin the chance to know?

 

Dustin Hoffman plays the same character in most movies. Just looks different.

 

I play the same role in my life. But I don’t have a script to know how it end.

 

Improv, baby!

 

One day, you will see how it ends. Most likely shitting my pants. I hope I have something in me to shit out. Seeing what it looks like when there isn’t haunts me, and will always haunt me. Just like being in New Orleans in 2013 in February will always. Thanks for the memories you fucking place that has ghosts, little ghosts.

 

I get in my car. Start it. Put it in reverse. I think about not looking and just going.

 

The next day, I push the elevator button…