IF EDWARD MORRIS didn’t show up to work, and you worked with him, it would impact you in the following way:
(1) You would have to take the stairs.
Okay, so not really a big deal—aside from that gate blocking the staircase on the third floor, which you need a key to open. All tenants have keys, though, so it’s kind of whatever. Morris has a key too, but he doesn’t need it because he has Marfan Syndrome—extremely long, double-jointed fingers perfect for reaching through gates and popping latches.
Until a couple weeks ago, Morris worked in downtown Portland at the Semler Building, running the last manually operated elevator in the city. Manual elevators were prevalent in Portland, all the way through the 1950s. By 1960, they’d started to go, replaced by push-button ones people could operate themselves. Morris describes his position simply as being “a living anachronism.” I spent the day with him in the elevator car, taking tenants up and down, to and from their offices in the building.
Morris feels pretty strongly there should be a plaque in the building’s lobby touting the significance of the manual elevator, but for now there’s just a Post-it he wrote and taped to the building directory. There’s also a Post-it he taped to the wall in the ladies’ restroom on the sixth floor after a tenant complained to him about another tenant stealing toilet paper: “Bathroom supplies are for all tenants. Please do not remove them. If you need them that bad, talk to Ed.”
I’ve arranged to shadow him all day, and when I come into the lobby, he’s wearing all black—including a black vest and suspenders hanging down by his thighs. A wallet chain hangs out of his pocket. When we sit down to chat, I start to notice the subtler things about his appearance, like how long his fingers are. They’re so long that I do a double take, initially thinking he has six fingers on each hand. And all his piercing holes—five in each ear, two in the nose, and one in the tongue that I can’t see. Under his clothing he apparently also has a “shit-load of tattoos,” including one that says “Bastards of the Universe”—the name of a social group he and his friends created in
college, and a snake on his arm.
“That one I gave myself,” he explains, “using nothing but a slot car motor and a pen. I bled like a stuck pig.”
Before I got there at 9 am, he’d already given two tarot readings to himself and rides to about a half-dozen tenants. I jump into the
elevator and can immediately tell he relishes the formality of his job: He makes a point to announce the number of whatever floor the elevator is arriving on, as well as when somebody is getting on or off the elevator, not unlike the caller at a debutante ball. He also gets a kick out of the small-talky interactions he has with people during their rides. He says he likes the contact habit, putting that little spin on someone else’s day.
Somebody asks him how his day is going. “It’s goin’. Don’t know when, where, why, or how but it’s definitely goin’.”
* * *
During slow points, Morris and I sit down in the lobby or smoke cigarettes outside, and he tells me about things like his mother’s Multiple Sclerosis; his father’s brain tumor; a particularly worthwhile acid trip (“I went to a Rocky Horror party August of ’91 and popped a hit of four-way window-pane acid and rode for 12 hours straight. It was the most cleansing spiritual thing that had ever happened to me and I’ll preach about it ’til I turn blue in the face.”); the $12,000 he owes in back child support; and some of his past jobs, including a gig unloading Slinky dogs from trucks the year the movie Toy Story came out.
For lunch, he usually just walks to the 7-Eleven down the block and gets a hoagie or something.
* * *
A buzzer buzzes. Somebody needs a ride down to the lobby. He tells me that buzzer is like a meditation bell to him.
“In monasteries, monks come around with a bell to remind you to be in the present moment. That’s what that elevator is to me. Can’t get too attached to anything. It’s the perfect job for somebody with a bunch of things going on at once.”
It quickly becomes apparent that people tend to let their guards down when they’re in the elevator with Morris. This morning, the girl from the second floor told Morris that she got “distracted” while visiting the cute real estate guy on four, with a wink. At lunchtime, we gave a ride down to the lobby to a big guy from the third floor, and I remarked that he seemed nice. “Yeah, I thought so too, until he told me last week how he likes to hit his girlfriend,” Morris deadpans.
Holy shit.
We ride out the afternoon and I start to see some of the same faces I saw in the morning. Except it’s a little strange for me, because now I know things about them.
When a girl on her cell phone walks into the lobby, Morris and I both jump up and go to the elevator. But she walks right past us and takes the stairs. Morris says “deee-nied” in a deep, joking voice. “Talk to the elevator operator not the phone!” he says after she is out of earshot. “Chew on that a little while. That is anachronism city!”
* * *
Two days passed after my day with Morris, and then I received this text message: “It’s Ed from the Semler. Just got fired. Need to talk ASAP.”
We met up a few days later at Three Friends Coffeehouse in Southeast, where Morris and a couple of his friends regularly participate in the poetry open mic that’s held there every Monday. Turns out, Morris is a science-fiction writer, and quite an acclaimed one, at that. He’s been on panels at both Wordstock and the Oregon Science Fiction Convention, and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2011. He shows up in a trench coat, with rings in every one of his piercing holes. He’s carrying a walking stick made of blackthorn wood that he says was gifted to him by Olympia, Washington-based horror writer/Iditarod racer Laird Barron.
“The weather’s gonna change soon,” Morris says. “My whole body feels like a marionette crumbling apart.”
We get to talking about his firing, which he’s pretty bummed about. But he’s always been able to find work and isn’t too worried. He’d only been working the elevator gig for five months, but said it was the perfect writer job. He’ll miss his meditation bell, and the distinction of being the last of his kind—carrying the torch for all the elevator operators of Portland’s past. He says the reason he was fired had something to do with him taking the elevator to the fourth floor after hours to hang out with a tenant and not clearing it with the building’s owner, Jeffrey Brady, first. Brady wouldn’t comment on this incident, but did complain that Morris “slammed that door one too many times.”
“If you don’t pay attention to it, you could really hurt somebody. You could cut somebody’s arm off, or kill somebody too with that elevator if you don’t pay
attention.”
Umm… okay.
Maybe Morris can include that tidbit in a short story he’s working on, that he read to me over lunch. It’s about a zombie elevator operator who doesn’t realize he’s died and doesn’t understand that the building’s tenants are long gone and won’t be coming back to work, won’t be riding the elevator anymore. The lonely elevator operator pleads with himself, the universe, the situation: “They’ll all be back. They have to come back. They will come back.”
* * *
I go over to the Semler a few days after Morris was fired, and find a construction guy from the building is all spiffed up—wearing a tan-colored vest and pressed slacks. He’s filling in until they hire someone else for the gig. I’ve got some business to attend to up on the sixth floor.
“Hey, how’s it goin’?” I ask him. “It’s goin’,” he says. He takes me up to my floor. I get off the elevator.
I don’t remember anything else about him.
Ed is a genius. If you don’t believe me, listen to him read one of his stories.
Just one thing: never tell an elevator guy anything, he’ll spill his guts like Caesar on the Ides.
I’d have married Edward Morris had he and I not had the single most grotesque and detailed conversation about crab lice that I have ever (and hopefully will ever) have with another human being. Quite the beautiful mind, this one.
That’s the most sideways compliment I’ve ever gotten, but I’ll take it. Why am I not remembering that conversation? Cheers anyway <3 And to all who read and contributed to this piece as well. Long-time reader, first-time interviewee. Edward Morris dante3000@gmail.com
DEADBEAT DAD GETS FIRED FROM WORLD’S EASIEST JOB. NEWS AT 11.
I pay my support. The back part is interest from when I couldn’t find a job, smartass. And that firing was without due cause. Your bad manners are exceeded only by your bad manners.
You don’t know me from a can of paint. If you’d like to rectify that, I already posted my email. Otherwise, go back to writing what you know.
Well, I guess this article isn’t as intellectually offensive as Georgia Perry’s write-up on the “pet whisperer”.
THE COGNITIVE DISSONANCE OF CLAIMING THAT YOU’VE PAID YOUR CHILD SUPPORT, YET OWE $12,000 IN CHILD SUPPORT IS SIMPLY AMAZING. I APPLAUD YOUR ABILITY TO LIE TO YOURSELF LIKE THAT.
I am not taking the bait here. Comment threads are for trolls, when it gets to this level. Sod off and get a life. If you’re going to make personal judgements about me, then email me and talk to me about it like a man. Otherwise, good day.
For the record,and for the benefit of everyone else who is not a professional troll, what I said was “I pay my support,” not “I have paid my support.” I am paying on it. I would give three body parts of your choice to have that debt paid off.I have also not seen my daughter Lydia Catherine Morris since she was a year and a half old, and she is thirteen. Her mother and I are estranged,and there is no legal reason why I am denied visitation.Every day I carry that burden,and every day I miss my little girl with all my soul.When I have a job,or income at all,that debt gets paid on.I have had a tremendously hard life that I am trying to live morally and improve.If that makes me a deadbeat, then the Captain of the Troll Patrol and his broken shift key can dance on my grave and have a good time at it.
Pay no attention to the man behind the capslock.
AMEN to that, Ed.
Don’t you just love when some idiot attempts to make a judgement call about a situation and a person they clearly know nothing about?? Never fear … those of us who know YOU know better than to pay this troglodyte any mind.
Anyone who has ever been without a job while bills mounted knows full well how long it takes to crawl out of the debt abyss … and that even if you reach a point where you’re able to meet your current obligations, you’re not always able to catch up on your past ones.
Particularly in this economy, I’d have expected folks to be more understanding of that fact.
So yes, troll … dance on. And hope while you’re doing your merry jig that you don’t EVER find out firsthand what it feels like to have to sacrifice the most important thing in your life for the almighty dollar that you just didn’t have when you needed it.
@EDWARD MORRIS: SO WHAT YOU’RE SAYING IS THAT IF YOUR INABILITY TO MAINTAIN GAINFUL EMPLOYMENT AND PAY YOUR CHILD SUPPORT MAKES YOU A DEADBEAT DAD, THEN YOU’RE A DEADBEAT DAD? IN THAT CASE YOU’RE AGREEING WITH MY ORIGINAL PREMISE.
ALSO, LULZ: http://articles.cnn.com/keyword/edward-mor… WAS THIS YOU?
It must be nice to have nothing better to do on a Friday afternoon than post misleading links to articles about two completely different people who happen to have the same name in order to bolster your need to troll.
Keep dancing to the banjo music, buddy. I think I hear the theme from “Deliverance” playing in the background on your end.
A deadbeat parent is someone who willingly dodges paying child support, not one who has gotten behind on payments because they’re out of work. But yeah, jake, having that term repeatedly misapplied to him here was clearly Ed’s own fault for speaking about himself personally in a personal profile article. People who are in debt should live in shame, right?
@HEATHER FAIRFIELD: ARE YOU SAYING I’M LIKE BURT REYNOLDS, THE STAR OF DELIVERANCE?
@GEYSER: MAYBE THERE’S A DEGREE OF DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WILLFULY DODGING PAYMENTS AND LIVING YOUR LIFE IN SUCH A MANNER AS TO BE CONTINUALLY UNABLE TO MAKE PAYMENTS. BUT GENERALLY SPEAKING, IF YOU DON’T WANT PEOPLE TO TALK ABOUT SOMETHING; DON’T BRING IT UP. MUCH LIKE MY CRIPPLING ADDICTION TO BUTTEFINGER CANDYBARS.
@Graham: No, you’re like Ned Beatty, ’cause you’re squealin’ like a piggy.
@MOON RABBIT: SO YOU THINK RAPE IS A JOKE? CLASSY.
@Graham: “Living your life in such a manner blah blah blah”
Employment and debt crises have reached such epidemic proportions that it’s ridiculous to keep trying to ignore how systemic they are, and not even mainstream conservatives can really get away with knee-jerk blaming of individual’s irresponsibility to explain away all the masses of people out of work or who have debts that have become unmanageable.
And where has anyone said they didn’t want to talk about this topic, period?
You’re funny, Graham, after asking Morris whether he was a multiple murderer brought you “LULZ.”
Graham, stop trying so hard to troll in your schticky ALL CAPS gimmick. It’s old.
Graham, you’ve really gone off the rails these last few months. Everything okay buddy? Was there a reason to pick a fight with this dude?
I can affirm that Edward does pay his child support. When he has work. He also complains bitterly about every penny he has to give them, because he seems to think that he shouldn’t have to pay money if he doesn’t get to see his child. Whether or not that makes him a deadbeat, I leave up to y’all. I’ve noticed that he’s certainly not the only man out there who seems to hold that opinion.
As for getting fired, I wouldn’t feel too sorry for him, folks. If he really did get let go for the reasons he says he did, then it was because he was thrown away due to someone else’s anger and overly-jealous or controlling ways. Which is no different than the kind of treatment I have received from him. So, in a literary sense… I’d say it’s poetic justice.
THE LORD JESUS CHRIST WILL SMITE ALL OF YOU FORNICATORS!!!
If anyone would like to see the kind of read Georgia was talking about, I am featured reader at the Stone Soup read, which local poet Curtis White-Carroll and a few other poets spearhead.Marino Adriatic Cafe, SE 41st and Division, TBA in April. The Marino does one of those a month, and Curtis brings in the best of the best. So far, it will be me featuring, my poetic battle-buddy Curtis reading as long as he wants, and my housemate and great friend Adam Cedar, (beloved of the Variant reads and just about everywhere else he reads.) Trying to nail down a third performer, will post the date of the read when we all agree.
Also, my first collection of published short stories was just released from Wildside, here: http://www.wildsidebooks.com/Shock-Theatre-Collected-Speculative-Fiction-2002-2006-by-Edward-R-Morris-trade-pb_p_9692.html They are reprints, all, but many of the online magazines where they have appeared have since been eaten by the economy, sadly. So the two writers who run Wildside on a shoestring asked me to collect them. I’ve never made a dime from one Wildside book, but BLACKGUARD:FATHERS AND SONS is in the Multnomah County Library as well, if a science-fictional take on the old Club Panorama on Stark St. is of any interest…
While I find empathy with being out of work, losing a job, paying the bills, and so on – (and I do hope this guy finds work soon), I wonder what all those spiffy tatoos, piercings and clothing he has has cost – in the place of supporting his own child?
Morals about work, or rather – what work not to do, seem to me to take a backseat to ones’ responsibility as a parent.
The commentary thread here is better than the article itself.
Georgia mentioned the Pushcart Prize In Literature. That is true. I was nominated for my story “One Night In Manhattan”, which ran in Big Pulp, Summer 2010 edition. Check it out here for free. http://www.bigpulp.com/issues/2011_09/morris_manhattan.html She also mentioned Wordstock. Here I am on the schedule… http://schedule.wordstockfestival.com/speaker/edwardmorris/list/descriptions/ Still waiting for someone to Youtube the video of me reading from Robert Sheckley’s “The Body Game.” Sheckley was a local science fiction author of no small repute, who used to hang out and smoke outside Central Branch of the library and talk my ear off once in a while. It was an honor to speak about him. I also did the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival from 2006-2009 as a guest author and panelist, and am a regular guest and writing adjudicator at Orycon, the Oregon Science Fiction Convention.
Agree that those who are chronically unable to pay child support are in fact, deadbeats. If your child lived with you, you would find a way to feed and clothe them, no? But because you don’t get to see them, you don’t feel obligated to truly work a job to support them. People don’t get fired over and over again because the world is full of assholes. People get fired over and over again because they don’t realize that they are a shitty employee who needs therapy and some perspective. The victim card has an expiration date. The rest of the world gets over their childhood traumas, save for the “artists” who cling to every perceived slight as if it were the very hand of God telling them they aren’t good enough instead of getting their shit together and busting their ass and not taking everything personally. Believe me, it’s not personal. You aren’t special enough for people to make it personal. But you keep on working on those “meaningful” tattoos and searching for the meaning of life while the world keeps spinning around you. You had promise and you have stagnated. Reading your comments is much like reading the comments of a bitter 16 year old. Time to grow up, running an elevator isn’t exactly going to send the daughter that you love so much to college anyway, now is it????
Wow, folks.
(*shakes head*)
At what exact point in our society’s evolution was it when we decided to use social interest columns in our local newpaper/electronic publications as an invitation to launch open season on the individual being interviewed? There’s a big difference between public character assassination and meaningful commentary about an article.
And with all due respect and love to the ex-girlfriend mentioned above (since I think I know who this person is), please know that I love you dearly, but would respectfully ask you to consider that this comment thread isn’t the proper forum to air whatever dirty laundry is between you both. I feel awful that things between the two of you went south, but this isn’t the place to hash all that out.
Yeah, all I can say is that after seeing this kind of thing unfold, I’d never let anyone do a personal story on me, either. It’s extra classy of one of his exes @25 to air dirty laundry and make vague and uncalled-for accusations in a forum where she’s anonymous and he’s not, and it’s clear that no one here will have to hear the other side of the story. Good thing people generally don’t give a shit what anonymous people say in comment threads, right? I don’t know Edward but from what I’ve seen in this comment thread, he’ll get through this ugly gauntlet with his dignity intact.
Based on the headline, I thought this article would be about an elevator operator. Instead, I got a profile of an artist that burns through jobs, has tattoos and piercings, and owes back child support. BOR-ing. If I wanted to hear a story like that I’d go to Craigslist personals.
Wednesday, February 28th at the Northwest Library, (NW 23d and Thurman) I will be one of three featured readers, with Toni Partington and Lisa Wible, for the Verse in Person Poetry Series. 7-8 p.m. I have this article and the Merc to thank for that feature,and I hear there are 2-3 more on the way. I will post the dates. Thank you so much for this wonderful opportunity.
@27 – you had me ’til you mentioned the Variant.
My bad. Adam reads a lot of other places, too. I just mentioned the first one I thought was well-known. I like the owners of the Variant, but the reads are too crowded to get around in with a cane, and they are really more like a group of good friends reading to each other than an Open mic, no offense to the read. Here’s a link to some of the podcasts from the Three Friends reads. These feature, among others, local poetry legend Walt Curtis (subject of Gus Van Sant’s movie “Mala Noche.”) Please cut, paste and enjoy, with my compliments: http://showandtellgallery.org/?tag=edward-morris
I also wanted to thank Rick Thurber and Randy Estes at Artisan Jewelers, 6th fl., Semler Building (whose work can be seen in the “Twilight” movies on Bella, FWIW) as well as Chris Moncrieffe and his band Princess Ugly; Alan Viewig, Attorney at Law, and all the other tenants who tipped me a total of two hundred dollars for Christmas. All six of my current employment references with the Employment Department are either current tenants at the Semler,or former staff that Dr. Brady also fired on a whim, at a rate of one per month, because, in the words of my own (fired) supervisor, “He didn’t like them.” This isn’t *about* me. A lot of people have been hurt by his behavior,and no one deserves to be. Not even me.
ed is magic
bout time mercury did a real story about a real person that makes this town portland
now do one about owen and vinka
Lots of shameless self-promotion going on here.
I hope one day you’re daughter gets to cultivate a relationship with you, whether it be while she is still under the roof of her mother or when she is an adult.
It’s really too bad that her mother rather punish her own daughter simply because she is still angry with the man that gave her that daughter.
I also wanted to thank Charles Nelson Reilly, just for everything.
I would like to thank McLaine Stevenson of tv’s Hello Larry
I would like like to thank the Lord Jesus.