The worst part of living in an apartment is the elevator. It’s turning me into an agoraphobe. Every time I want or need to leave my apartment, I am almost guaranteed to bump into someone in the elevator and suffer the mild tension of being stuck in a small quite box with them for at most fourteen floors. I will have likely seen this person dozens of times in the building or at the coffee shop or grocery store--I could even have been their neighbor for years and have seen them hundreds of times without uttering more than a polite greeting. I might bump into the chain-smoking menopausal woman with the dry blond hair. She always carries a frumpy black leather purse and wears fur lined boots and a green jacket that looks waterproof. Sometimes I see her multiple times a day for multiple days in a row... She’s a constant. I see her when I leave for a run coming into the building after a smoke, and thirty minutes later when I return, I she her heading back out for another smoke. I hold the door for her. I don’t need to ask what floor she is on when I punch the buttons. I can remember a lot of my neighbor’s floors. Although I play like I don’t, for proprieties sake. It would be strange if I didn’t need to ask the bleached blond Starbucks barista with the dejected posture what floor she was on. I know it’s eleven.


One afternoon I got into the elevator to leave and get a haircut. The elevator stopped on the tenth floor. I braced for the introduction. Elevators are so undignified. The doors opened and I see an ugly blackout drunk slut in a loose silvery halter top and a black skirt saying her drunk farewells to a shirtless man in swim trunks; he is also drunk. They are slurring their goodbyes to each other and stop the elevator doors from closing twice. He decides to get in the elevator with her and take her to the front door of the building. She apologized for being so drunk and got very close to me. She started yelling about how bad she wanted pussy and to suck on a clit.


Often, I meet people in the elevator taking their mutts out to shit, or coming back from taking their mutts to shit, and pick up hot shit with their hands. Riding an elevator to go pick up hot shit with your hands is about as undignified as it gets. I don’t see the appeal. Dogs don’t belong in apartments. I see more dogs in strollers than babies. Dogs think every time the elevator door opens it’s their floor. Which is why I think each floor should be marked with a specific scent, for the sake of the confused mutts.