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…

 

thoughts, and where they lead...

I want a moment with my ex like the ending of the first episode of “The Newsroom”. I know it’s not going to happen, but, I’d still like that moment.

“What are your plans for my Emily?” her uncle said to me in Colorado.

“I don’t have any plans for her. I’m just trying to be there for her,” was my answer.

He grabbed my shoulder and looked me in the eyes. “Just don’t hurt her,” he said.

“Never,” I said with a smile.

She never heard that conversation. I never told her about it.

And I hadn’t really thought about it until right now. Especially the ending part.

And now I wish I hadn’t thought about it at all.

I want so much to believe in the Hollywood ending. The epiphany will come. Even if it takes years. But life isn’t like that for most of us. We bounce into people’s lives and it works or it doesn’t. For whatever reason, some get it right the first time. Some get it right after 100 tries. Some never do.

I hope that I’m not one of the latter. I’d hate to think that really, she was the one, and I let her go. Or she let me go.

The old cliché that if you let someone go, if they come back blah, blah, blah.

Fuck that shit. And fuck the keep trying. Fuck it. It’s all lies. We all fuck each other over. Some can just deal with it better than others.

And fuck that. I don’t want to be so God damn bitter. But I am. And I only have myself to blame. And damn you The Darkness for making that phrase always be in Justin Hawkins’ voice. No matter what the context. Welcome to my fucked up mind.

But that holds true for it all. You are what you perceive. Your reality is only what you perceive it to be. It’s so damn simple, and I’d guess so damn true.

I was thinking of writing about my father’s Members Only jacket tonight. About maybe putting it one after he dies. But I don’t want to think about my dad being dead. As much as we’ve fucking hated each other over the years – and dammit, I think he’s hated me at times too – I still love that fucking drunk bastard. I still want so much to make him proud of me. And I know my time is limited on that front. His health is bad, but damn, he keeps drinking. He keeps being bitter about things. And every day I see how much like him I really am. No matter how much I tried not to be. It’s impossible. Yeah, I don’t berate the one’s I love like he did. But I hide from them as much. And nowadays, they run away when you do that. They don’t stick around.

I wonder often what would have happened if my mom had had the guts to leave. She should have. He was a fucking prick most of the time. At least what I remember. And I don’t remember much, so for it to have made that much of an impression, it must have been a lot.

I still want to incorporate my mom taking that fucking marlin off the wall, hauling it to the front door and chucking it into the bushes into a story one day. Into a screen play. I was on the stairs, peering down through the white wood railings that lead upstairs. Me, a confused and scared little kid wondering why my parents fought so damn much. I know now why. And I always tried to say I’d never do the same things my dad did. Switch jobs for a woman. Give up on my dreams for hers. But, you know what. I always did the exact same thing. Even when I thought I wasn’t. It’s a fucked up world out there. And we’re all a part of it. And no matter, I made the decisions I made. Which either directly or indirectly led to the demise of great things in my life. And as Justin Hawkins will keep singing in my head all night “I’ve only got myself to blame…”

I see it now too. I want so badly to move to Raleigh and just get a job digging ditches or mowing lawns. But, I don’t want to give up on the “life.” Not that the “life” has ever given anything back to me but a couple of plagues on my floor – yeah, I don’t hang them – and a lot of pain – laid off, unrespected, angst-ridden.

I guess that’s why all the old guys were all single. Or divorced in the business. The smart ones got out. The ones that wanted families and lives and happiness. The rest of us, we got old and crusty and bitter.

And our teeth fell out.

Not yet, though.