Up
I hate elevators. I’m afraid they’ll go up and never stop. I blow into my paper bag when I’m in an elevator. Usually, I only choose doctors that are on the ground floor. I live on the ground floor of my apartment building. Anyway, it’s the middle of the Covid epidemic, and I have to see my dentist for a cleaning. A few months ago he moved into his new medical building and this is my first time here. Not only am I nervous about being in a medical building during the pandemic, but he’s on the tenth floor. On top of it the brand new building is digital.
In the new smart elevator you say the number of the floor you’re going to and the elevator goes up or down. I say, “Ten!” But why isn’t it going up? Why is it going down? Fast! Under my butterfly printed mask, I’m breathing so hard it’s sucking into my mouth, and then I see the sign that instructs how to use the elevator. You have to say the floor number followed by saying, Up, or Down.
Oh my God I didn’t say UP. So I’m shouting “Up!” But the elevator is soaring down, down, and suddenly stops. The door slides open. It’s pitch dark. I’m panicked. I’m perspiring. I shout “Ten. Up!” Is anyone there?” I think the floor is underneath the building. I don’t want to die in an elevator in an unfinished garage. “Up! Ten UP!” I shout.
To a great tremble, the doors slide close, and the elevator soars up. Am I having a heart attack? I can’t breathe. I can’t see. My cell phone is lost on the bottom of my huge tote bag.
The door opens, and I leap onto the tenth floor. I open my purse and take out my smart water, and swallow a Xanax. It’s time to let go of my fear of heights, Salmonella, falling, airplanes, crossing the street, choking to death in a public restaurant, and I vow to stop writing about the men I meet on zoom. To have more compassion.
Evening, almost night:
I’m on the phone with Moo Moo Milstein. I’m telling her about my elevator neurosis. She talks about the array of dates she meets at online events. One date sounds worse than the other.
“I’ve had it with the singles sites,” I add. “The last one I met, his name is Garden, and he looked like a weed. One of those old hippies who talked to his plants. All he did was talk about his ugly cactus, holding it close to the screen, implying that his penis size was similar. To vomit. No thank you.”
“I can hear the stress in your voice.” She sighs, unhappily.
I continue: “I’ll die alone with my cabbage patch doll Sylvia. Probably the CNN news will be on and the Covid will be worse or we’ll all be dead.”
“Well, I don’t want to be alone.” Moo Moo cries then. She hates being alone. She thinks a man will make her happy and not so “miserable.” Her boyfriend doesn’t like her vagina. He says it’s …old.” She sniffs. “He stopped calling, and I’m alone. Alone,” she repeats.
“Another person can’t make you happy,” I insist. “You have to find happy within yourself…have a relationship with you. Who you are.”
She sniffs twice. “Rainbow Grossman had her vagina steamed. She said it works.”
“You need to work. Use this nightmare we’re in to go inside yourself, to reflect. It’s an opportunity. It’s…”
The screen is dark. She ended the call.
I dream that I’m inside an elevator and it’s floating in space and it has little oval windows and I can see the stars, and oh you should see the stars, up close they pulsate and they’re lilac color and higher I see some yellow and green and….
BarbaraRose (brooker) is an author, age activist, and podcaster. Her latest novel Love, Sometimes, published Feb 2020, Post Hill Press, is available in all bookstores and on Amazon and Target and other venues. Her 2020 TV appearances and podcasts are on you tube, and on www.barbararosebrooker.com She is the founder of www.agemarch.org
and is planning the first virtual age march in history.
