Elevators
Elevators are transcendental apparatti, a temporary home between destinations, ever moving, purposeful and deliberate. Where is an elevator most truly at rest? When in motion.
The worst thing for an elevator is to have all its buttons pushed, perhaps by an errant child wishing to be mischievous, to exact his or her will upon the universe. But what these children don’t often realize is that their little fleshy fingers thwart necessity and determination, and participate in entropy and the destruction of All Things Good. Some of these children know this and do it anyway. When adults, they act very much the same.
Though the Romans didn’t have an elevator at Masada, they sure wish they did. But a ramp is not as good as an elevator. Case in point: When the elevator went out in his building last year, Jorge Castano of Chicago tried to build a ramp of boards and furniture from the alleyway to his third story apartment. Friends say he did this in jest, but the result was not so funny. Mr. Castano broke both his legs in the fall.
How many people have died in elevators? Thousands. How many have been conceived or born in elevators? Tens of thousands. The elevator is a place of life.
The elevator is a place of lust. Luis XV had a counterweight lift constructed at his apartment at Versailles in order to link his rooms with those of his mistress, the stunning Madame de Chateanrouge. They are rumored to be the first to have intercourse in an elevator.
There is much talk and speculation about sex in elevators, and how can we blame such talk? When the doors slide close so smoothly, how can we not think of skin? When hemmed in such squareness, how can we help but feel the roundness of our flesh? Most people, even the most reserved and dried up, feel a strange arousal in elevators. Our eyes search the hopeful bodies among us, and even if alone the hunger awakens. This is why elevators are often warm.
Tragedies still occur, of course. There are the amputations, the beheadings. The Chinese deliveryman trapped for three days between floors in a Manhattan apartment building lost his voice from screaming. Perhaps the people of the building wrote off his screams as normal screams, even though if you were to hear them you would be chilled to the bone. Around the second day, when his voice no longer worked and the elevator was filled with the smell of his own excretions, he made peace with his god and resigned himself to die. When the doors finally opened and the engineers stood before him with sheepish smiles, he didn’t even get up. He looked at them and said, “This going down.” But nobody understood him.
When elevators are very crowded, strange things can happen. Odors become amplified and people have been known to suddenly become very gassy. Angers can flare. Women, and some men, are often fondled against their will. And people in the back of the elevator always need to get out before people in front. Some say it just happens this way, but perhaps there is a reason.
When confronted with the choice between a screaming infant or a talkative old man, of 2,346 people polled, over 73% stated they would rather be stuck in the elevator with the infant.
In 1875, the Western Union Telegraph building in New York City clocked its elevators at speeds reaching one hundred miles per hour. After researching various possibilities of padding, harnessing, and other safety implications, they slowed the elevators to a more reasonable rate of ascension and descent. However, on weekends the operators would disconnect the regulators and race each other until the inevitable tragedy of 1879.
The French are known for many things, but few people know about their ground-breaking use of asspower. At the seacoast Abbey of Mont St. Michel, a treadmill hoisting machine was constructed in 1203 using four asses harnessed together. They used this primitive elevator to convey various staples, including the holy cheeses.
Some say the elevator is an attempt to reach unto the heavens, to defy God, to tempt fate, &c. But mostly the elevator is just for lazy people who don’t like stairs, for the transportation of cargo, and to ascend tall buildings. Without elevators, we would not have so many skyscrapers. Without elevators, the people living in skyscrapers, after walking up two hundred flights of stairs, would not come down very often. And if they forgot to pick up milk on the way home…
When the Otis Elevator Company invented the ‘signal control’ in 1924, attendants were no longer needed in elevators and many of these attendants, seeing that their usefulness and purpose in life had been usurped by mechanization, committed suicide.
There is much contention between Americans and the English over the terms ‘elevator’ and ‘lift.’ What both sides often don’t address is the fact that both words are flawed. These devices do not only elevate or lift things, but also descend and lower as well.
Awkward conversations often occur in elevators, conversations that would not, could not, happen under any other circumstance. The first such awkward conversation occurred in 233 B.C.E. when two slaves were suspended in a block and tackle contraption designed by the venerable Archimedes. While attempting to untangle the lines, the conversation went something like this: “So, the bread was not too hard last night at supper,” said the first slave. “No, no, the bread was just right,” said the second. There were a few moments of silence and they watched the lines being played with and noticed it might take a while. “I hope the bread is that good tonight,” said the first slave. But the second slave didn’t reply, even after they were moving again.
The next time you find yourself in an elevator, look at the people sharing the space with you. Know that their eyes show the same recognition of death as your own.
aleakypen (Stuff for your head to use quietly.) 
