Jesus Christ Architect

We were installing this three-story “stair screen” that bordered the main stairwell of the penthouse apartment at the top of this tower in the upper east side. The stair screen cost $350,000. It had a look reminiscent of the interior design of an imperial star destroyer. We had been told not to use the elevators because the residents were complaining of having to stand too close to day-labor. There being no service elevators and being on the 36th floor, we took the elevators anyhow at lunch, to get coffee, to smuggle in tools and material. I recall one elderly man in particular who got on the elevator with us; his eyes bugged out and the veins bulged on his forehead and his mustache stood up in rage: he clearly preferred that we did not exist. The building management yelled at us later that day: “Your crew can’t take the elevators after 9AM!” Service elevators are typical in other Manhattan sky rises in order to maintain the fiction that rich people exist alone in their wealth. This building attempted to maintain this fiction by yelling at us and sending a lot of angry emails to our project manager. We took the elevators anyhow. Over the month of work, as the penthouse buildout came to an end, the more features were finished the uglier it became. This was amusing to us in the lower classes and depicted an obvious truth: the wealthy can afford to have bad taste. Or to put this psychoanalytically: as Freud says, money is shit; the $37 million penthouse was a pinnacle of shittyness. One day the architect arrived with his entourage. He was wearing a gray pinstripe suit, a lavender shirt and a cornflower yellow ascot: he was very handsome and his hair was perfect; he acted as if he were on cocaine. He climbed up the step ladder in front of the fireplace where a hidden TV could drop down out of the chimney in the two story livingroom. “Take a picture of me!” he yelled. “Take a picture of me!” He spread his arms wide and closed his eyes. “I am Jesus Christ!”