Dec 22 20
Once, we stole a decorative urn from a hotel. It was a strange thing to do. We had first noticed it on the elevator landing of the floor where our mother was staying. She had come down to check on us at school — a (fruitless) attempt to reorient our “mounting oddness.”
The urn was large and sat on a small table between two corporately-mutated Louis XV chairs. It was black and classically funereal. Like a deluded middle class dreamer out of a Flaubert novel, we imagined its acquisition would change things for us. Ultimately it was to be part of a string of absurd and desperate moves to define ourself. Looking back it seems like so much pointless trouble.
We returned to the hotel on a random night — well after dinner hours but not conspicuously late. We set out from our nowhere apartment with a knapsack (it was our sister’s, one of those large hiking backpacks typically seen overloading mute undergraduates on public transport between European hostels).
Feeling recognizably alone and acting abnormally natural, we pushed through the revolving doors, passed the side-leering manikins of the concierge counter and up the elevator to the correct floor. There it was, rather out of place, freakishly Victorian. We sat in the cone of light in one of the flanking chairs. We didn’t move for a long time trying to muster nerve; managing the swirl of foolishness and self loathing.
We placed the bag open in front of the table. We reached for it decidedly. It hardly budged. Was it tackily fixed, forecasting idiots like us? With even more commitment and recklessness we turned our back to the elevator and gave it a full two-armed tug. It wasn’t glued or bolted, it was solid marble — an object of ridiculous weight. Witlessly we dedicated to our task. We picked it up, practically stumbling backwards, collapsing to our knees horribly failing at cleanly putting the thing in the sack. While panicking, trying to un-pinch the fabric and draw up the material around it, the elevator doors opened. The urn was half in half out. We froze in a lurch, like a grave robber in the beam of a flashlight.
A well heeled family of four exited and stopped. They were about 10 ft from us. A man and woman and their two children; the apotheosis of stability — our antithesis. We made condemning eye contact with each one, watching their expressions migrate from confusion to unvarnished contempt. We must have shrugged unstably as they fortuitously thought it best to move on.
We franticly finished our job and zipped it closed, projecting that the man was talking to the front desk about the insane person on their floor. Getting the sack up on to our back took ludicrous effort, but we did it. The only way to walk was being dreadfully bent, our chest almost parallel to the floor. Leaving the the elevator, like a young hunchback, we staggered to the exit. To our disbelief we entered the blank evening unmolested.
We were fairly haunted by our activity — not dramatically, but more farcically. We had a part time job as a lifeguard at a hospital pool. It was supposedly for nurses and doctors; but no one ever swam there. Between not going to class and sitting poolside in red trunks in an old office chair, we spent a lot of time thinking whether we would continue live so nonsensically. We did.
Some time later we bumped the urn off its shelf crashing it down on a fish bowl, denting the floor and sending water into the crack.
The urn was large and sat on a small table between two corporately-mutated Louis XV chairs. It was black and classically funereal. Like a deluded middle class dreamer out of a Flaubert novel, we imagined its acquisition would change things for us. Ultimately it was to be part of a string of absurd and desperate moves to define ourself. Looking back it seems like so much pointless trouble.
We returned to the hotel on a random night — well after dinner hours but not conspicuously late. We set out from our nowhere apartment with a knapsack (it was our sister’s, one of those large hiking backpacks typically seen overloading mute undergraduates on public transport between European hostels).
Feeling recognizably alone and acting abnormally natural, we pushed through the revolving doors, passed the side-leering manikins of the concierge counter and up the elevator to the correct floor. There it was, rather out of place, freakishly Victorian. We sat in the cone of light in one of the flanking chairs. We didn’t move for a long time trying to muster nerve; managing the swirl of foolishness and self loathing.
We placed the bag open in front of the table. We reached for it decidedly. It hardly budged. Was it tackily fixed, forecasting idiots like us? With even more commitment and recklessness we turned our back to the elevator and gave it a full two-armed tug. It wasn’t glued or bolted, it was solid marble — an object of ridiculous weight. Witlessly we dedicated to our task. We picked it up, practically stumbling backwards, collapsing to our knees horribly failing at cleanly putting the thing in the sack. While panicking, trying to un-pinch the fabric and draw up the material around it, the elevator doors opened. The urn was half in half out. We froze in a lurch, like a grave robber in the beam of a flashlight.
A well heeled family of four exited and stopped. They were about 10 ft from us. A man and woman and their two children; the apotheosis of stability — our antithesis. We made condemning eye contact with each one, watching their expressions migrate from confusion to unvarnished contempt. We must have shrugged unstably as they fortuitously thought it best to move on.
We franticly finished our job and zipped it closed, projecting that the man was talking to the front desk about the insane person on their floor. Getting the sack up on to our back took ludicrous effort, but we did it. The only way to walk was being dreadfully bent, our chest almost parallel to the floor. Leaving the the elevator, like a young hunchback, we staggered to the exit. To our disbelief we entered the blank evening unmolested.
We were fairly haunted by our activity — not dramatically, but more farcically. We had a part time job as a lifeguard at a hospital pool. It was supposedly for nurses and doctors; but no one ever swam there. Between not going to class and sitting poolside in red trunks in an old office chair, we spent a lot of time thinking whether we would continue live so nonsensically. We did.
Some time later we bumped the urn off its shelf crashing it down on a fish bowl, denting the floor and sending water into the crack.