(1) In Chile, no one says hi to each other in elevators. You get in and pretend you don’t see anyone, you pretend you’re blind. And if you say hello, people look at you strangely, sometimes they don’t even return the greeting. You share your fragility in silence, like a sacrifice. (2) How hard would it be to say hello, you think, while the door opens on an in-between floor. There are already nine, ten people, and no one else can fit. Someone’s headphones are playing a song that you know and like. (3) It would be easier to embrace the woman standing there in front of you. What you and she share is the effort to avoid touching each other. (4) You remember getting punished once when you were little, maybe eight years old: you’d been caught in the girls’ bathroom swapping kisses with a little classmate. It wasn’t the first time you and she had kissed each other. It was a game, a kind of dare. A teacher saw you, scolded you, brought you to the principal’s office.
