It was a weekend. I headed from the activity hall back into my dorm and waited in the lobby for a free elevator to take me back up to my room on the seventh floor. Just when I thought it was my turn, several of the most irritating guys -- sports heroes and posers -- from the third floor, and many of their friends, piled past me into the more reliable of the 2000 lb-capacity elevators. I counted the gorillas as they piled past me; it looked like about nine.
I decided to wait for the next elevator. I watched the elevator indicators carefully; after it hit the second floor it would be all right to hit the call button again; if I did it before the elevator got on its way it would halt and open the doors again, which none of us needed.
The "2" indicator flickered on, then off. The sound of the elevator in motion stopped, and I heard the sounds of sudden cursing from inside the elevator shaft.
"Oh, fuck!"
"What?"
"Oh, damn, the elevator! Shit!"
There were sounds of pounding, of buttons being pressed.
"Dammit!"
I walked up to the door, pressed my ear to the crack, and listened. Yup, they were stuck, all right. I put my mouth to the crack, and, in the voice of that irritating bully kid Nelson from The Simpsons who taunts people in times of misfortune, I said: "Ha-ha!"
"Fuck you!" said the elevator.
I wandered away from the elevator, which had gotten down to a broken record of obscenities, and found a Resident Advisor in the hall office. "The elevator broke down again," I told him. It was the RA from the third floor.
"Oh God," he said, and got up from the desk. "What happened?"
"There are a bunch of guys on it. Nine. They were going to the third floor. I think they're stuck on the second floor."
The RA winced. "Right," he said, and traipsed over to the elevators. He grabbed the door in both hands and pulled. The doors opened about an inch, enough for him to see that the floor of the elevator was about a foot below the top of the elevator doors. "Damn," he said. "Don't let anybody mess things up worse. I'm gonna go call the firemen. Again." He jogged back to the hall office.
A crowd had gathered by the time the firemen got there in their elevator-opening gear. Wiser friends of the third-floor bandits were making obscene jokes at the stranded children inside. The firemen made some comments about idiots, got out the elevator door key, and opened up the doors. The elevator was indeed stuck between floors. "Right," one of the firemen said at the forest of Nikes just above eye level, and shut and locked the doors again.
The firemen, and the crowd of interested bystanders, trouped up to the second floor, where the firemen repeated the performance with the door. "All right," the fireman in charge told the guys inside, who were growing restless. "Nobody inside there move much. Definitely don't try to climb out. I think the problem is that you overloaded the elevator, and so if someone climbs out, the elevator may start up again, and we don't want anyone cut in half. We're going to go shut down the elevators, in the basement, so that won't happen. So nobody move, OK?" The firemen tromped off down the stairs towards the basement.
The basement was off-limits to us mere dormdwellers. Someone from the fifth floor brought out his miniature video camera and began filming the proceedings. Inside the elevator, the boys had gotten squirmy and were making bad gay-jokes at each other.
"Hey, Bob, stop feeling up my butt!"
"I'll stop feeling your butt if you'll stop dry-humping me!"
"I'm not dry-humping you, Richard is dry-humping me from behind!"
"Richard, stop dry-humping Will!"
"Will, stop poking your ass into my crotch!"
"OW! Whose elbow just hit my groin?"
"Anyone want a backrub?"
"Eeew."
"Okay, I guess that means no."
"Shut up, queer."
"It takes one to know one."
"Eeew! Who farted?"
"Nobody's talking to you, King."
"You're talking to me."
"Only to tell you nobody's talking to you."
"So why is nobody talking to me?"
"Because you're not gay, and everybody's hurt that you won't sleep with them."
"I am too gay!"
"Hah! King admitted he's gay! Hey, everybody, King's gay! King's gay!"
"Shaddup, you! I am not!"
"Hey, could you talk a little more clearly? My camera doesn't have a very good mike."
"Omigod he's taping us!"
"Hi Mom!"
"Hi, Will's mom!"
The camera did an extreme close-up of the poorly-lit interior of the elevator and the waving hands sticking out, then the operator began interviewing bystanders. He found the RA who had called the firemen, and interviewed him.
The firemen came back just about then. "All right, guys, we're going to get you out of there," one of them said, and shooed the crowd back a ways.
Another fireman walked businesslike up to the elevator. "Okay, easy does it, one at a time." He knelt down by the elevator and grabbed the nearest set of hands. "Now I want you to worm your way out onto the floor without kicking any of your friends in there," he directed.
Even before the guy had gotten off the elevator floor, his companions began to yell and moan. "Ow, my foot!"
"Ow, my knee!"
"Ow, my groin!" This from someone in the far corner, who couldn't possibly have gotten kicked.
"Ow, my arm! My chest! My sensitive nipples!"
"Ow, my ears," the fireman holding the crowd away muttered near the camera. Those of us close enough to hear cracked up.
We heard footsteps pounding down the nearest stairway, and a girl pushed her way onto the scene, one of the irritating preppy-types who clung to the nearest available jock. She wore ash grey sweatpants, an oversized and very pink Betty Boop nightshirt, her hair was a mess, and she wore no makeup. "Augh! Where's my Richard?" she asked shrilly, looking around.
"Your Richard's just fine," one of the unoccupied firemen said soothingly.
"No he's not! He's stuck in that horrible elevator! Ricky! Ricky! Are you all right?"
A noncommittal mutter arose from the elevator, and then Richard, whichever one he was, emitted a heart-rending moan.
"Oh, Ricky!!"
A few heaves on the fireman's part, and Richard was out of the elevator. The prep was all over him, and he allowed himself to be led away as she had hysterics on his shoulder.
The firemen allowed the stairwell door to clang shut before they, to a man, broke out in hysterical laughter.
The rest of the elevator evacuation, strangely enough, went with some small amount of dignity. The videojournalist, sensing that most of the drama was over, took the opportunity to get some more man-on-the-street post-mortem interviews with the victims and bystanders. I found the camera shoved in my face.
"What was your reaction when you heard about the horrible plight of these young men?" the would-be reporter asked.
I made a photogenic face as the firemen escorted the last of the not much worse for the wear sports heroes out of the elevator and packed up their elevator-cracking kit behind me. "The stupid assholes brought it upon themselves," I said in my cutest voice, smiling sweetly.
The RA from the third floor, who was standing next to me, cracked up.
First Rant
Previous rant
Next rant
Rants home
Main page
