Wednesday, April 20, 2005

Love in an elevator

This hot dude in my office building offered to give me a ride in the freight elevator up to my floor this morning, to which I giggled, “ oh, hahahaha it’s okay, stairs are GREAT! Well not really, hahaha, but the exercise, you know, ha-ha (whimper) ha! See you later!”

Then Steve Tyler and a bunch of underwear models got out of the elevator that was when I was really bummed. Ok, fine there was no Aerosmith or models, but there is that tune running thru my head “Giving it up as I’m going down.” What is it about elevators that are so sexy?

I have mixed feelings about elevators. Sometimes they scare me and sometimes they excite me. When they are crowded, squeaky, slow, I am nervous. When the elevator goes somewhere cool like at Epcot Center’s The Living Seas, when it goes underwater. When it has a pregnant woman in it I am both scared and excited, I mean this could be a hilarious and touching sitcom moment, (but then I would be the one delivering the baby).

At my old office I hated the main elevator, because it prompted lame conversations with
unhappy business types. There was this one lady in particular with really bad hair that always happen to catch the same elevator as me in the morning. This woman hated silence and would proceed to sigh, moan, gasp, and mutter swears (shit, c’mon) and cheers (TGIF!) the whole ride. Upon her exit she would always turn to me and say, “nice talking to you.”
Talking? I didn’t say a word, unless of course I did call her a *bag-bag out loud, but I could have sworn that was an inside moment.

I did love riding the freight elevator at my old job. The building Super Sal was the driver of this ride, it lead down to the storage room basement, which as the “freelance temp” I was involuntarily sent to organize.

Sal was a 5’3 Sicilian man who loved me and loved him. Italians LOVE each other no matter what. I have seen people piss off my parents and just before it gets ugly I hear “Parlo Italiano? The next thing I know Gina and Luigi are dancing the Tarantella with my parents and eating meatballs (ok, no meatballs, but how great would it be if all Italian just walked around always carrying meatballs?).

Sal had callused dirty hands from years of manual labor. He rocked back and forth heel to toe in an effort to make up for his height. He spoke in angry yet compassionate manner, and always asked “wadyoudo?” Sal was exactly like my father, except shorter (I never thought that could be possible).

On our final ride together, just before I left that job, Sal turned to me and said, “So you leave dis job ah? You gotta better one?”
“Sure” I replied, although I ended up leaving for a job that was so awful I walked out after day three. (Have you ever seen the film “Swimming with Sharks”? That was my job.)
“Good, good” he said, “ You need a nice job, like work in a bank, that’s nice job”

I love to hear what my parents people think is a good job. Perhaps Sal was right, maybe bank-teller would be a good job for me but I still choose to float through the different adventures I come across on my artistic journey toward self-satisfaction. My latest little job is great, good energy, good co-workers, and most of all good company for elevator rides, sexy company for elevator rides (if only I could get in, oh and I love boyfriend. Oh well).

*Note: I normally do not promote the word douche-bag, because as an insult calling someone a feminine product really carries no power or injury. Although in this case, the woman I speak of actually resembled a vagina. She has really bushy big hair and saggy face, thus the use of the word bag-bag feels appropriate. Thank you.