Meeting Neighbors in Elevators

To get to our home now, we take the elevator. That seems so obvious, and banal. After all, we’re not going to be walking up and down twenty six floors every time we come or go. But getting to and from your home from an elevator is a cosmic shift from getting to and from your home via a driveway and a front door. When you live in a house, and you arrive home, you’ve entered your private domain: unless you have a friend or neighbor waiting for you on your front steps, you have a pretty good chance of being alone. You’ve had your experience out in the world, you’ve made it through the traffic throngs on Aurora Avenue or the creeping cavalcade of cars on the I-5 and you’re here: home. At last. Your sanctuary. Or at the very least, your private place: your shelter.

But when you live in a high-rise apartment building, you’re not alone until you walk through your apartment door. When we turn into our building’s lobby, there’s the concierge at the lobby desk, and the two leasing agents off to the side, behind often-open glass doors. Our son is a friendly sort who loves to talk, so we often have chats with all three of these folks before we make it to the bank of elevators. Once inside an elevator, it’s anyone’s guess who, and how many, people we’ll share our ride with before we reach our floor. Being near the top of a building gives us the chance to ride with people all the way to their destination; or at least all those except for those above us. And I’m not going to lie: sometimes I’m just not in the mood to chat. Things happen: distraction, exhaustion, stress — and I don’t always feel like doing small talk. On those days I want to do what frankly many others in the building do, which is ride in silence: head tilted down to the phone screen, or up to watch, in that mindless, familiar exercise, the floor numbers change.

I’ve done that a few times, but not many. The first reason being that my son, who is by leaps and bounds much more of an extrovert, has usually already started a conversation with our fellow elevator-riders, and the second is because I don’t want to be that person: the one who doesn’t engage. And so, whether thrown into it by my son, or pushed into it by my own innate compulsion to fight the default setting of my natural introversion, I speak. Often we chat about dogs: ours, or theirs. Sometimes we chat about how long they’ve lived in the building, or how much they like it. One time three twenty-somethings: two young men and one young woman, crowded into the elevator with my daughter and I, and another youngish man. The young woman was bubbly and chatty: the two men not so much. They looked shy, and awkward, and somewhat bemused and amazed by their companion (who was she? My daughter and I wondered later: a colleague? A friend of a friend?) because clearly they didn’t know her well. And clearly she was working hard to open them up: to get them to socialize. She was asking them their apartment number: indicating that she had had a friend who had lived on the 9th floor. When one of the young men pushed the button for floor 9, she lit up. When all three stepped off into the hall and she saw which door they were going to, she broke out into such a loud, glorious laugh (“You DO live in his old apartment! That’s the one!”) That the three of us remaining in the elevator broke into laughter, too. “I think she might befriend everyone who lives in that apartment,” I said. “I think so too,” our elevator-companion said, and we all laughed again.

One time, travelling down to the garage from our apartment, the elevator stopped on floor 19. I was alone: no husband, kids or dog. A middle-aged man got on, and before he was even all the way in, he said, “Hello, Beautiful. How are you doing?” The atmosphere of the elevator immediately darkened. All my antennae rose. “So,” he continued, “When are you due?” I think I scoffed out loud. I don’t know. All I knew was that I knew this person: I’d been married to one just like it, before. I’m not a person who looks pregnant. “You should never say that to a person,” I replied. “Oh, well I apologize,” he said. “Now you have yourself a wonderful day,” he added, as the door opened. I walked out, angry and disgusted: here, too? Jerks and assholes will at times show up in our elevator, too? Fantastic. Before, when I was in our driveway, just about in the front door, there was pretty much a 99% chance I wouldn’t have to confront a creep. Here: yeah, well, you can bet I’ll hold my breath every time the elevator gets to floor 19. My daughter and I have now had multiple discussions about elevator safety and Just because they live in our building doesn’t mean….Goddamn; it all makes me flaming mad. But then, apartment buildings aren’t private. Elevators aren’t personal valet services. Living here, we’ve opened ourselves to living more in the world than outside of it.

Sometimes we’ll have a good laugh with a perfect stranger. Other times we’ll be thinking about what to do if. It’s a trade-off of sorts. By necessity, we’ll keep riding the elevator: all the way up, and all the way down. We’re here: we’re in this. It’s not all spectacular views and exciting downtown fun. But we’re in this.