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23.

The doors open. You can't rush in expecting nobody, although that would be a reasonable expectation. But sometimes people ride up so they can be the first to ride down. If you have your hand casually down the front of your pants just, you know, scratching, an Indian man with a thick mustache will catch you unawares. Awkward.

17.

Add one Chinese couple. The Indian man is visibly relieved, because now he is not alone with a perceived public masturbator. There is a baby, a baby with a gigantic head, which will happily tilt your way much to its' parents chagrin. Babies are not supposed to look at strangers. Especially foreign ones.

Tell the Chinese couple that their baby looks silly, it has a donkin' top-heavy donk, but try to sound really happy about it. Then the baby will love you even more because it's acutely aware of tone but not of content. Because its a baby, of course, which is sorta like a dog.

14.

For some reason 14 has been relabeled 13, with an ominous scrawling about "Satan's lair" on the wall. Clearly the markings of the crybaby occultist, the heavy-metal darkness dick, supernatural Poe 101. If you see this kid you have vowed to punch his or her dumb gothic melon.

Another Indian man (this one without a mustache) gets on and Chinese parents use this fortuitous opportunity to spirit Happy Big Head Baby away into solitude. They huddle protectively around it like birds, heads lowered. Developmental claustrophobia. The Indian men launch effortlessly into conversation like long-lost brothers.

12.

Everybody looks expectantly at the doors. Nothing.

11.

Everybody looks expectantly at the doors. Nothing. Suddenly a black girl rushes through out of nowhere, hair dyed a sickly straw blond colour, screaming into her cell phone. Everyone shrinks away, assailed by the machine-gun chatter. You are pleased, now, in a guilty way, because you feel truly multicultural. Then you notice that each race is segregated into a different corner and keeping as much distance as possible. You are still the tallest. The baby still has the biggest head.

9 whizzes by. 8, 7, 6. Cell phone closed. Slowing down.

Within the enclosure, eyes avert. You look at the ceiling grill, at the shiny steel walls, at the grimy floor tiles, at anything but the crush of strange humanity all around you. There is not enough room for this many people; eyes encroach, accidentally seek each other out, lock, flee screamingly back to the nothing corners in mute embarrassment.

5, 4.

Almost there.

3.

Almost...

2. Stop. Sigh.

Who the fuck gets on at 2? Unless you're in a wheelchair, in which case there's no room left anyway.

It's just some dude, some walking dude. He's walking, his legs work. He could've walked down the stairs. The tension cracks and breaks, everyone aiming disdain his way. We are now unified against 2: our totality greater than the sum of its parts, like a giant anime robot merged together for the purpose of ultimate destruction.

The Indian men glower. The black girl clicks her teeth and shakes her head in disgust. The Chinese parents visibly shield their baby from this new foreign interloper, now looking very much like vultures bent over some delicious cut of carrion. You make a concerted effort to afford 2 as little room as possible, passive-aggressively nudging him into the back wall. Fuckhead.

G. Zero. Finally.

Fuckhead is the first one out the doors. He's out like a shot, running scared (or so we'd like to think). The rest of us nod amiably at each other, detach and wander off into the world. Cooperative living. The glory of a connection formed through shared animosity for trivial inconvenience. The dramaturgy of an elevator.

Posted by Chris at 10:41 PM >> Commentations (3)