When you sit on the sidewalk,
everyone has to look down at you...

by Gareth Edel

There are places, which always draw my mind to a memory. These memories may be short clear and specific or at times they will be a sense of some emotion. I have always loved bookstores and generally I feel more comfortable in them than in other places surrounded by strangers. All bookstores (in Vermont, New Hampshire North Carolina, or California) but I especially love going to the Strand. I went to school near Union square and when I wasn't smoking or hanging out with friends I would walk to the Strand and look for bargains. The category of book doesn't matter to me; I can enjoy almost any section. Despite a long standing (if bloodless) war between mathematics, and myself I have stolen a few victories in the math section. I have found science books, which impressed faculty. In one case I purchased a cookbook of colonial dishes…as yet unpracticed. I once at the age of seventeen and generally unaware of how the world worked purchased a book titled "Classical Hindu Erotology" I read it and much like Thomas Jefferson's recipes the Hindu's lessons will have to keep waiting.

Because of this love of the strand, I generally suggest it as a sort of tourist attraction. I bring my friends there with the understanding that it is not, simply a bookstore and they always find something interesting to look at. Something sexy in art, something interesting in Philosophy, or even something stupid but cheap which they find amusing.

None of that is important to the story I intend to tell though. The story I intend to tell is different. In order to tell it, I want to assure you of two things. First, I did indeed (as friends can attest) wear clothing that could provide the image of an economically disadvantaged person. Second, I am telling this story based on my recollection of the events and not anything relating the truth itself.

The actual story I wanted to tell occurred when I went away for a weekend away from college.

When we started out that day it was so cold that I wore a Mexican woolen poncho over my usual slightly ragged long coat. Desperate for Warm clothing I piled on layers, and found a wool hat from years before. Slightly moth eaten. I had been in the habit of wearing finger-less gloves (It allowed easier cigarette lighting, and access to pocket change).

I went with a group of friends from school and they were coming with my brother and I to NYC where we would ignore perilously deep snow and freezing gusts of wind. Our agenda: stop by a now infamous alphabet city Squat (which would in later days be placed under siege). See Washington Square Park, and the Village, and I said we should go to the Strand. The group was full of the sort of literate over-educated malcontents I am frequently friends with I knew they could be entertained by a bookstore as readily as I could.

We had been out in the cold for hours, wandering, discovering, when we arrived. At the mad house that is the Strand bookstore in the pre-Christmas shopping season, there was a line spilled out the door from the bag check, and through the window you could see the two boys who checked bags wading waist deep in purses, packs and parcels. With that image in mind I looked at my companions, three hippies two punks my bother the communist and myself. Of the seven of us, I was the only one who had packed no bag. Three of our visitors had huge camping backpacks that they carried with them wherever they went.

The wind had died down and the temperature had risen to a comprehensible temperature, no longer numbing you through whatever you wore. I spoke: "we should have pity on those poor unfortunate men, who slave at the thankless job of safeguarding those bags…." Or perhaps it would be more realistic if I was to have said: "they won't take those big ass bags at the check, and I don't blame them."

At that moment the group knew that they had reached a problem, not everyone could go inside. Would Evan and Jake stay outside because they had the largest bags. Would heather stay outside due to her large bag? I moved toward the door not caring for any arguments and ready to be inside where it was, but rather than let it fragment the group, the group decided that I would sit out side with all the bags under the awning. They ignored my protests so I eventually agreed to this mandate, on the condition that they would relieve me as guard after a few minutes. We would take turns freezing our asses off. As with any group of good friends they had agreed to my reasonable request and then they didn't come out.

Imagine in your mind trying to smoke and read a book in the driving snow. You are only partially protected from the elements by a shop's awning and a pile of luggage the size of a love seat. Imagine the look on your face, lighting a match in the wind, after the first fifteen minutes outside and then after half an hour. That look is not as unhappy as the look I had as I sat there.

It is with that exact sour face; As well as a half a cigarette at my lips, a closed book on my knees, bundled into a coat, Mexican Wool poncho, hat with a hole in it, and finger-less gloved hands trying to work a lighter, surrounded by a pile of luggage, on the side walk in the snow that the one Calvin Klein model I have ever met walked by.

In High school I had known a very nice, very quiet girl named Aurora who had a sister a few years behind her in school. Aurora had left our high school for another, but her sister stayed, and so in that small environment that loved nothing more than gossip, Aurora's sister becoming a Calvin Klein model was big news. She never took off as a model, as far as I know, but she does have the claim to fame of having been on popcorn bags at sony theaters coast to coast.

I hadn't seen either Aurora or her sister Eleanore for several years, and I hadn't thought about Eleanore's popcorn bags since I was in high school. But as I sat miserable on a backpack, wondering how long my friends would be inside. I looked up and smiled as I recognized Eleanore. She was walking what, at first glance, could have been a large rat. I will assume it was a dog. And next to her was a well-dressed middle aged woman. I said hello, and was promptly ignored by mother, but Eleanore had recognized me and stopped. She looked unhappy out walking her rat in the cold snowy wind, probably because the fashionable jacket she wore wasn't warm enough, unlike my multi layered wool style. We each said a tentative hello, and before her mother could drag her away she asked if I had "gone to Friends Seminary". She asked not out of any doubt that she placed my face, but simply because that was the way she asked. I said "yes, and you are Aurora's sister, Eleanor." She corrected me, "Elle-lay-ann-ore."

"Sorry" Nice name. "Are you still at Friends?

Eleanore:"Yes, until the end of this year." Or some similar reply.

Mother: Oh?

"How is your sister? The Alumni news- letter said where she went to college, but I don't remember. "

Eleanore: "She is fine. What …What are you… up to these days?"

"I am up at Hampshire College, well, not right now, I came with friends back to the city to see a squat, and get away."

Mother: "Oh?"

Eleanore: "sounds like you're… good…"

"Sure. No problem, a little cold, my friends are in the strand and left me out here, for a few minutes."

Mother: "Oh?"

"Yeah, it was interesting, the Alphabet City squat is connected to food not bombs."

Mother: "You're in school?"

"Yes, I am up at Hampshire."

Eleanore: "So, is everything going…. Um, well?"

"Oh… um yeah, it is being fun I guess…."

Eleanore: "You have a place to stay in the city?"

"Yes, I stay out at my mothers house in Queens when I am in the city."

Eleanore: "Oh… uh, Good.

Mother: "Where is Hampshire, in New Hampshire?"

"Actually, it is in Massachussets. "

Mother: "Uhuh… yeah."

"I get that all the time, it is right next to Amherst."

Mother: "Really?"

"Yeah. So Eleanore where do you think about going to college?" A look speaking of indeterminacy crosses her face before her mother interrupts her.

Mother: "Maybe we should go."

Eleanore: "Yeah, so you're good?"

"Yes, It was nice seeing you, and please say hello to your sister for me.

Eleanore: "I will."

"It was nice meeting you Mrs. H, have a good day."

Mother: " Ummm. Yes. Goodbye

Watching them walk away I started thinking about how Aurora was prettier than Eleanore, but soon forgot the whole thing, behind the irritation at my companions for, literally and figuratively, leaving me out in the cold.

They came out about ten minutes after my visitors had left, and to add insult to injury, I wasn't allowed to go inside. We had to get to lunch they said and dragged me away. As we walked I mentioned to one friend that I had just seen the Calvin Klein model that had gone to my high school. Without missing a beat, another friend said that I had looked silly when He had walked out of the strand. The friend who I had been speaking to said "so what did you guys talk about."

"I said to say hello to her sister, and that I went to Hampshire College, and they said all was good with them and that Aurora is doing well."

"Them, who was with the model?"

"Oh, she had her Mother with her, and their dog."

"Dude, they thought you were homeless."

"They didn't think I was homeless."

"You were sitting in the snow with all our bags and looked homeless, they thought you were homeless.

"The mother did keep saying 'oh?"

The next time I bumped into Eleanore she looked like she had seen a ghost, so startled to see me that she actually jumped. I was stepping out of the academy of music after seeing a movie in North Hampton Massachusetts a few miles from school, and there she was stepping up to grab the door knob as I swung it open to come out. And she jumped. Or maybe hopped is closer, but the expression is jumped. It was a warm fall evening and I was dressed up to go out with friends.

Eleanore: "What are you doing here?"

"Seeing a movie."

Eleanore: "You live up here?"

"No, I go to school."

Eleanore: "Oh, I didn't know you were in school up here."

"Yeah, I am over at Hampshire, what brings you to North Hampton?"

Eleanore: "You are at Hampshire? Oh. Okay, I am here at school, I just start going to Smith."

"Great, are you liking it? Lesbian yet? Just a joke." I regret that joke to this day, but she was an 18 year old model and it was the most charming I could manage on short notice, and under pressure. And the small talk continued until…. "The negotiator, It is very good, Is that what you are here to see?"

"Yes. So I should go inside and get a ticket. It's…um … good to know you are doing well. I'll say hi to my sister for you."

And she went inside. I felt like an ass for not trying for her phone number.

When a friend asked who she was, I was a smart-ass and said "that is my girlfriend the Calvin Klein model." To which he responded. "Oh, so that's the one who thought you were homeless."

And suddenly I was glad I hadn't asked for her phone number.