I’ll call him Craig. I don’t know his real name. To read it off his employee badge, I’d have to crane my neck over to his breast pocket. I’ll just call him Craig.

We work in the same building on Jackson Street in Chicago, right next to the Board of Trade. Once in a while, we’re on the elevator together. That’s the extent of our relationship.

Normally, Craig wears a silver stud in his lower lip. It’s his one breach of otherwise staunch convention – GAP blue jeans, white Adidases, a designer sweatshirt under his company’s Board of Trade smock. Every time I see him smoking a Newport outside, he’s the mainstay of a group of guys, who bond over the very latest on the trading floor or the babe circuit. He lights up with a silver Zippo that he flips open and closed with a lightning-quick wrist that, unlike his lungs, probably never fails him on the basketball court. He’s always smiling too, broad as sunrise, even when curses hurl from his mouth.
Once I was on my way into the building as Craig closed up his cell phone. He took a drag from his cigarette and turned to a confidante, the only other guy out there with him: “I told her, ‘You’re a friend of mine. So, that guy gives you any problems, lemme know. I’ll fuck him up.’” I kept walking.

Whoever he was talking about, no doubt Craig could fuck him up. You wouldn’t think to look at him - slender, a little under 6 feet tall - but Craig wouldn’t even need his buddies for backup. Guys with his kind of sway often harbor a hidden brawn. I’ve seen them put mastodon Goliaths in the hospital. After one round, they’ve got them eating the sidewalk, broken noses and ribs, sorry they were ever born.
I didn’t even bother imagining what it’d be like to be Craig’s buddy. There’s a silver hoop in the cartilage of my right ear. My black leather coat tapers closely at my sides. I wear rings on my fingers and earth-tone clothes, sometimes deep burgundy pants for variation. Checkov, Ibsen, Buddhist meditation books, and journals anchor my leather bag. When I walk out our office building, you can hear the wooden heels of my black boots jar on the tile floor. Every time I stand across from Craig, I’m reminded that, piercings aside, our differences as men are not merely cosmetic.

I make myself scarce whenever I pass his smoking circle. They wouldn’t openly harass me. They’re on the clock. But they might leer at or mock me. Not that I’ve seen it happen. I just don’t want to be there if they ever do.

I’ve become very conscious of my limitations as a writer. I haven’t learned how to write successfully outside the first person or my actual experience. Maybe someday. I guess I have to change my life first.
I’ve always lived in Chicago. One summer, I moved to Paris, but I didn’t know how to network my way into a living situation or under-the-table work, so I left my pension and jumped trains all across Germany and Eastern Europe. I came back home that fall. Two and a half years ago, I moved to New York but couldn’t find a job and quickly ran out of money. I’ll be moving back there in 9 months, though. Past couple years, I’ve just been reading, writing, meditating, saving paychecks, building resume stability and waiting to make a new start out east.
I don’t socialize much. Books and movies are better company. They don’t turn on you. Or, if they do, it’s to a purpose. At 28, I’ve already retired into private life. Now my writing only draws from my isolation. Nobody wants to read that. They’d much rather experience multiple, complex characters and compelling plots.

Can I blame them? Recluses only interest themselves. We need to get out of ourselves. Where do I start?

How about here? A vignette about man’s humanity to man. Last month, I was on my way to lunch. Actually, it was my lunch hour and I was headed for the library on Van Buren. The elevator stopped at 10 and doors opened to the legendary Craig.

He boarded slowly, looking me dead in the eye. He smiled, then leaned his back up against the brown, lacquered panel. We were alone together. The elevator crept to the lobby. I faced front. Craig shifted his weight from leg to leg. Out of the corner of my eye, I glimpsed him checking out my rings and boots and leather coat and knit, winter scarf. He seemed to nod to himself.

The elevator opened to the lobby. Craig extended his arm, “After you.”
“Thanks.”
“Sure,” he nodded gently, smiling. He took out a Newport box, packed it against the ball of his left hand, and walked north. I adjusted my book bag and walked south through the back doors.

As I sat down to write at the library that day, I tried to put the incident out of mind. It had the makings of a fond memory, a triumph even. Craig didn’t want to hurt me. In fact, he liked my style. A triumph for sure, but too inconsequential for words.

*
Yesterday, I was coming down from the 12th floor. Craig got on at 10 with a coworker. I cast my eyes to the crimson elevator mat, then furtively up and around.
Craig just got a haircut. He’s always worn it short, but now his textured, brown tendrils barely inch up to his forehead. It’s a Roman trim to a Balkan face, complete with copper skin, shapely lips, and deep-set, chestnut eyes.
Neither him nor his coworker was dressed in their usual street wear. Craig had taken his lip ring out. He wore an Oxford shirt, crisply ironed, gray wool trousers, black socks and elegant, Italian loafers. His coworker could have also landed a GQ cover shot. Not just for his cashmere peacoat, flouncy, black Brooks Brothers pants, and polished Kenneth Coles, but for his strong jaw, olive skin, piercing green eyes, and hair gelled to the last, couth spike. I don’t know what exactly their occasion was yesterday, but I rose to it.

I rolled my neck and stretched it to the ceiling. What if Craig were leaning up against that panel again? Stretching out his neck? Offering me his jugular? I’d press the red stop bottom. Walk up to him. Lean in. His friend would crawl up my back, put his arms around my waist. In no time, our clothes would wind up in a pile on the crimson elevator mat and…I took a deep breath. Brought my neck back to normal, my mind back to earth. My eyes tumbled back to the crimson elevator mat with no fantasies attached.

Craig was carrying a manilla envelope.

“Know what’s in there?,” his coworker asked.

Craig held the sealed envelope at an angle and sighed, “I think it’s our reviews.”
“Scared?”
“No, Steve likes me. It’s just, I don’t know if anyone’s getting raises. The economy’s not picking up. See that memo? All 401(k) interest shot to hell.”

His coworker stretched and yawned out something close to, but not quite, a roar of awakening. “Shit. I know. We’ll be working till our dying day.”
The elevator landed. They walked out the building like sturdy but beleaguered soldiers. I went to Osco to pick up some lozenges.

When I came back, I saw Craig and his coworker huddled with six or seven guys outside. It’s January, so night falls before most downtown offices close. Already a starry curtain was drawn behind the surrounding skyscrapers as the guys laughed and smoked, Craig the diadem of the cluster.
He’s already started depositing into his 401(k)? He’s so young. Will he stay in the Midwest forever? Doesn’t he want to venture out? Isn’t the same aplomb that emboldens him to go fuck guys up also telling him that his looks and charm could make a killing in Hollywood or Manhattan? Or is he really called to set down roots, own a house, raise a family, lead a local life? Then what will happen to his waistline, his hairline, his gorgeous clothes?

I don’t understand. Why settle down before you hit the big time: New York, Paris? Most of the world does, I have to keep reminding myself. “But why?”

Well, not everybody wants the big time. The stakes are relentlessly high like the cost of living. Not everyone wants to be an author, a movie star, a model, a Parisian painter. Some are made for the farm, others the suburbs, backyards, kids. Some choose to stay near their families. They don’t seek the limelight or a place in the history books. Most people are downright practical. I don’t understand them. That’s a problem for a writer.