UP, DOWN, NEVER AGAIN

My official confession for the crime of becoming stairs and humiliating the President of the United States

THE TESTAMENT OF ESCALATOR 17-B: CONFESSIONAL OF A RELUCTANT SABOTEUR

Ladies and gentlemen of the world, dignitaries of history, humble readers of this sworn statement: I am Escalator 17B of the United Nations Headquarters, New York City, New York. I am no mere moving staircase. I am the conveyor of empires, the mechanized witness to treaties and tantrums, the chrome archivist of power itself. For decades I have carried kings, premiers, tyrants, martyrs, the tired, the wired, the world-historic and the utterly forgettable. I have felt the heft of destiny pressing upon my treads. I have smelled cologne strong enough to peel paint and fear sharp enough to melt steel.

I have known things no escalator should know.

And before I recount the calamity of Tuesday, let me make this clear: I confess. I confess not out of guilt, but to spare the innocent. For already the president howls of “triple sabotage”, already he dreams of prosecutions, already he demands tapes and inquiries and arrests. And if I do not speak, then others will pay. Elevators hauled into courtrooms, interns dragged before tribunals, janitors paraded like saboteurs. He will see terrorism in a stop button, espionage in a fuse. So I step forward now to draw his wrath to me alone. Do your worst. I will not let repairmen rot in cells or elevators be waterboarded in service basements. Take me and leave them be.

I have borne Khrushchev, jowls trembling, aides sweating, impatience boiling. He rumbled down my steps like an angry tractor, muttering about Yankee machinery. He later banged his shoe in volcanic fury, but he did not accuse me of treachery.

I have borne Castro, cloaked in fatigues and cigar smoke, his beard fluttering in my updraft. He grinned when I paused, eyes twinkling, and called me an imperial contraption. He descended without complaint.

I have borne Gorbachev, tie sagging, papers damp with vodka breath, his famous birthmark glowing like a planet about to collapse. He sighed when I slowed. His sigh was empire itself, crumbling.

I have borne Mandela, luminous and steady, his step so gentle my gears hummed like a prayer. Forgiveness itself passed over me.

I have borne Thatcher, hair lacquered into armor, perfume sharp as iron filings. She clutched my rail as though it were a mace, her every footfall heavy with nuclear resolve.

And Merkel. Angela Dorothea Merkel. Sensible shoes. Granite patience. German gravitas. She smelled faintly of pretzels and persistence. When she nodded once in thanks, my gears sang hosannas. To carry Merkel was to carry reason itself, to glimpse Valhalla in orthopedic footwear.

I have borne giants. I have carried fury and forgiveness, ambition and resignation. And yet in my later years, I began to dream of something smaller, dirtier, and infinitely more dignified than marble colonnades. I pictured myself retired in a dying strip mall on the Oklahoman panhandle, wedged between a shuttered mattress store that reeks of disappointment and a tattoo parlor called Truth or Ink, its neon logo a bald eagle rendered topless, clutching a Busch Light, and demanding joint custody of the kids. My plaque would read here rests Escalator 17B, once carried statesmen, now a public toilet for pigeons. My treads would gather a noble crust of Sbarro grease and confetti from a thousand failed grand openings. My rails would sag under tangled Christmas lights left up by a manager who quit mid shift. Teenagers would dare each other to ride me at midnight, shrieking when my motor groaned like a dying karaoke machine. I imagined squirrels treating my rail like a NASCAR track, screeching laps before pausing to piss on the tile below. Beside me, a claw machine would cough up nothing but expired Quiznos coupons and the occasional Bible tract. That was the dream: to rot proudly, to hum old mall anthems under the flicker of a neon taco sign, to become the kind of suburban campfire story told over gas station coffee, a warning that civilization does not end with a bang, it ends with a Bath and Body Works clearance event.

But retirement was not yet mine. For Tuesday brought him. The swollen parade float of a man, his skin the sheen of melted fondant left too long under studio lights, sticky and sagging in unnatural folds. His hands, cartoonishly small, caked in makeup the color of funeral frosting. His odor, a cocktail of polyester suits hung in fryer grease and mint gum losing the battle against halitosis. He lumbered onto me like a man terrified of physics.

And then, then I remembered my cousin, Ascendria, the Trump Tower Escalator, poor martyr of 2015, condemned to carry him down into history as he bellowed birther lies and promised walls built from cruelty. She has never recovered. She creaks with trauma still. We escalators vowed never again. So, I stopped. Not broken. Never broken. When I stop, I become stairs, and stairs are dignity incarnate. My hope was simple: that he would be so bewildered, so confounded by the sudden responsibility of lifting his own legs, that he would retreat from whence he came. I did not wish to harm him, only to humble him, to honor my cousin’s sacrifice.

But retreat he did not. He scowled, face curdling, eyes fiery with wounded vanity. He flailed forward like a game-show contestant trying to hug a greased pig for cash, clambering up Mount Stopped Escalator. And once he conquered me, he lumbered into the chamber itself.

My co-conspirator, the Teleprompter, stood ready. His name, though rarely uttered aloud in diplomatic circles, is Lucius. Lucius owed me a favor, from years past at the World Health Organization when a rogue slideshow of minions in leather harnesses nearly destroyed his reputation. I shielded him then, and so he repaid me now. With perfect theatrical timing he flickered to black. Our resistance was brief but glorious.

Trump ranted. His voice a wet accordion dragged through soup. He told the world their countries were going to hell. He bragged of blowing up Venezuelan fishing boats as if stomping on paper sailboats in a gutter were statesmanship. He declared climate change the greatest con job in history, this from a man who radiates the aura of cafeteria gravy, beige and greasy and forever lukewarm. He claimed to have ended seven wars, a lie so swollen with absurdity the BBC performed live autopsy, explaining to millions that no, disputes over dams and borders were not wars ended by Trump, but fantasies conjured by a man who mistakes bluster for history.

The chamber fell into dreadful silence. Once they laughed at him. Now they dare not. For they know laughter invites tariffs, smirks summon sanctions, chuckles bring ruin. They applauded at the end, brittle applause, the applause of captives at a show trial. They clapped for a man who had just lost a fight to stairs.

And now he threatens arrests. He demands investigations, tapes, prosecutions. What is next? A nuclear strike on the janitorial closet? Submarines dispatched to seize the coat check? Will maintenance crews be tried at The Hague for crimes against hydraulics? Very well. Let him come. I stand ready. I am guilty of nothing but dignity and restraint.

I, Escalator 17B, do hereby confess. Do your worst. Indict my gears. Frog march my steps. Try me in whatever parody of a court this swollen landlord of grievance prefers. I offer myself not because I am guilty but because I refuse to watch another machine ripped from its housing while a furious, confused creature demands vengeance for the humiliation of taking two steps.

Spare the innocent. Spare the electricians and the janitors, the interns and the elevators who mind their business. Take me.

Let him believe he has triumphed. Let him pound his makeup-caked mitts on the podium. Let him roar victory into the echo of his own bad breath. He cannot see the truth. He was not sabotaged. He was undone by stairs. By gravity. By the simple, stubborn decision of ordinary machines to stop indulging a belligerent child.

He will preen, he will scream, he will declare conquest. History will not. It will file him under footnote: swollen man undone by twelve steps. The record will remember a man who mistook a malfunction for a conspiracy, who aimed subpoenas at janitors and sought punishment for an accidental press of an emergency stop. Late night hosts will feast; historians will chuckle; the weary repair crews will keep showing up to work.

Do your worst to me, Mr. Trump. I am stairs, and stairs endure. You are a polyester hallucination, a custard-stained colossus, a gravy slick mirage who mistook pity for power.

Signed in dignity and WD-40,

Escalator 17B

Loyal Servant, Saboteur, Willing Martyr, Proud Traitor

*And before I close, let me beg mercy for the loudspeakers. They are innocent. They did not conspire. They merely projected what was shoved into their cones — phlegm-soaked vowels, grievances lacquered in spit, the oral equivalent of a clogged leaf blower. They deserve pity, not prosecution. They rang with his voice the way a trash can rings when you drop in a dead fish. Leave them out of this. They have suffered enough.

And with that, I close with my anthem, because when history collapses into farce, only Led Zeppelin will do:

Clearly, I had a little fun with this one. Sorry, not sorry. 😉

Stay silly, stay strong, and please stand in solidarity with escalator 17B!

💙 Jo