COMMITMENTS : The Ups and Downs of Chatting in Elevators

The three of us walked into the elevator together, down in the bowels of the subway station. He and she appeared to be acquaintances, meeting there by coincidence.

I was a stranger to both. He was short and bespectacled. She was tall, with big hair. I was medium. The elevator was a shower stall. We did the obligatory about-face and began our long ascent to street level in silence.

So far, so good.

“So,” she said.

Oh no.

“So how are you and what’s-her-name getting along?”

“Fine. Actually, we’re getting married.”

“Really? That’s great!”

“Thanks.” Silence. They both were nodding and smiling like dashboard dolls, the universal semaphore between people in close quarters who have nothing more to say. This was a hopeful sign.

“So.”

Oh no.

“So what, did you two just, like, suddenly decide?”

“Sort of.”

“That’s great!”

“Actually, we sort of, you know.” He glanced over at me. Still there. Inconsiderate of me. “Like we sort of didn’t have a choice.”

“Oh.” Pause. “Ohhhhhhh. Wow!”

Simultaneous bawdy, knowing laughter.

“But it’s great,” he said. “I mean, it’s great.”

“That’s great,” she said.

I said, “So, like, did the condom rupture or what?”

Not really. But I wanted to.

From time to time, a form of reprehensible behavior will become generally accepted because it is so common, even though it is patently wrong. Frisbees at a crowded beach. Boomboxes anywhere. After a while you don’t notice the sin.

I call the phenomenon Inure Face. It is the identical phenomenon that has compelled the editors of dictionaries to accept infer as a substitute for imply because so many people have confused the two antonyms that any meaningful distinction is lost.

Similarly, we have come to accept speaking in front of strangers in elevators, even though it is undeniably rude. To speak in an elevator is to act as though the stranger were a sentient being but somehow subhuman and therefore ignorable, the way you do not particularly worry about whether the family dog is in the room before you make love.

It is true that, with elevators, neither obvious alternative is perfect. One could elaborately attempt to include the stranger in your conversation, but that is a form of intrusive rudeness all its own. Or one could suspend all conversation the instant the doors close and stare dumbly at the floor-indicator lights, slack-jawed, dull-eyed, bovine.

I vote for that. Stupid is better than rude. Talking is rude. The root of the rudeness is that the outsider is simultaneously forced into the discussion and excluded from it. It is as though you have been invited to a sumptuous dinner at which delectable viands are passed beneath your nose--and then consumed loudly by someone else.

I say, get up from the table.

Lately, when I find myself in an elevator with two or more strangers, and one looks likely to erupt into conversation with the other, I suddenly, loudly, blurt out, like a street lunatic: “Don’t you just hate people who talk in elevators?”

Some people laugh. Some look away. Some suddenly remember that they have to get off at the next floor. But no one--no one--has begun a conversation.