DEB, with its bubble mirror façade, reflecting everything in front of it thousands of times. With headache lighting and belt racks, I could never go in there with my sisters. DEB smelled like belts and carpeting and money and gave me an instant headache.
WaldenBooks soothed that headache, with its folksy name and wooden shelves. The staff were so lax, there was access to any kind of material, and it smelled like books. It still smelled like carpet, too, but not like DEB. WaldenBooks seemed so cozy back then, like a real smart person's book place.
This was 1978, before we knew that chains were bad, that local booksellers were the best way. Mall regulars called it simply Waldens. Unfortunately, I don't think anyone had any ideas on Thoreau, preservationism, resistance, things like that, but they knew Walden was something literary.“Like Whit Walden or whats’is name up at Walden Woods, up in Mass, on Golden Pond or whatever,” my mom said.
Are they even around anymore, or did they get shut down/ bought out? I could Google it, but that would defeat my own purpose of writing in this blog space. Feel free to research if it seems crucial.
The copy of “The Joy of Gay Sex” was hidden there at Waldens in the Politics and Finance section, where nobody ever went, not even the staff. I didn’t hide it myself, but I found it and kept it hid. There were probably six of us, all complete strangers, feeding off the secret of our communal hiding place. Looking at the book, I couldn’t believe what I was in for. So lame.The drawings were so shitty that it wasn’t even dirty, like a sketch of “oral passive”, drawn as if it was a diagram for using a car jack.
Deflated, I would go to Spencer Gifts and flip through the dirty poster display in the back, skipping past all the Cheryl Tiegs and the Cheryl Ladds and all the Cheryls, swip, swip, swip, the blacklight Boston poster, swip, swip, the blacklight acid-head poster, swip, the pot-leaf poster, swip, swip, swip, until I got to the hairy fireman one, where you could see the top of his bush poking above his yellow rubber pants with red suspenders.
I would stand gawking, thinking more about the red suspenders than “oral passive”, until a gaggle of teenagers- a demographic that still works my nerves to this day- would come back there to check out the strobe lights, lava lamps, and posters of the Cheryls.
I would flip to a Cheryl as soon as I heard their stupid cracky voices, afraid they would think I was looking at the suspender fireman. “’Ay, Sherrrrrr-alll,” they’d say as they passed the poster, like Damone in Fast Times with the Deborah Harry cut-out, all oh… Debbie…hi…
It really was a magical world, the back of Spencer Gifts, and my time there was always ruined by some zit faced asshole who wanted some fake dog shit or punk sticks or a Cheryl.
Eventually, RIPTA would take me past the mall, all the way to Providence, where I’d find the smaller indie bookstores, with not only great books I’d never heard of, but entire rows of filth way better than the suspender fireman shit at Spencers.
My bus pas lasted another year before I got my license, the giant Volvo tires of the RIPTA bus kneeling to to the yellow curb with a hydraulic pssssssttt, dropping me off to find the sleazy alleys and parking lots where I would at last come to understand “oral passive”, in a very physical way. I even made a little lunch money.
Fuck WaldenBooks.
Fuck WaldenBooks.
5 comments:
Waldenbooks was owned by Borders so they've gone the way of the dinosaurs. Have you been to Lincoln Small recently? It's this really bizarre amalgamation of Target, a movie theatre, a VA hospital and a Beauty School -- oh, and Claire's, of course....
To think... we must have past each other a thousand times in that Walden Books and Spencer's and did not meet until years later... I used to work a few doors down at Chess King (no laughing!) and would spend my breaks looking at the same posters in Spencer ... my hair gelled out, my hoop-with-cross earing (cuz George Michael wore one and I just knew we were part of the same tribe, my big Cavaricci pants billowing around the body I was trying to hide because it did not look like the the body of the fireman in that poster in the back of Spencer... wondering if there was a place in the world for me and if I'd ever find love. And years later we met and I loved you and we found our tribe and I loved it all... I still think of you and smile...Thanks for a great post!
Hahahah! OH my GOD Christian. That comment killed me :dead: Chess King! Ohhhmygod. So, were you one of the other kids who knew about the hiding spot? Stupid Waldenbooks. Fortunately, Snow Street Books never checked ID. I was fuckin' THIRTEEN, they're all Hey There! Welcome to your sleazy future! (And it certainly didn't smell like the DEB shop up in that bitch) I love you! And Kelly! Thank you for the info! I have not been to Lincoln Mall in over twenty years. Wait, maybe that's not true. Ten years?
i love this post. it's giving me flashbacks of the bookstore i used to go to and shoplift these little glossy books full of soft-core Playgirl men. i worked in a Dunkin' Donuts in Willowbrook Mall, Wayne NJ. the mall was great when i was little, but as a teen it had decayed into a place i was afraid i'd get stabbed in.
I did indeed prowl those halls... such a different world. I used to hit the book store in Davol Square as well and flip through the gay porn and think well, I guess I need to start shaving all my body hair off but let my facial hair grow in.
I came out my senior year of high school and was totally blacklisted by all friends and most tachers at my lovely and "Christian" catholic high school - so when I met you and our gang it was such a wonderful thing to finally find you all - the senses of humor honed through pain and alientation, the laughs, the tears, the ability to survive - was great to not be alone and in such wonderful company!!!
Your blog is great and i will be a regular reader... Love C
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