Dans Papers - June 8, 2007 - Twentysomething... The Van

It's true: your appearance has a lot to do with how people treat you. Especially in Sagaponack.

On Sunday, I spent nearly the entire day Spring-cleaning my house/condo/amazing Ditch Plains (okay, screw you) eh hem, trailer, in Montauk. It was pretty awful. I had managed to borrow a van and also rounded up a troop to help with the piles of crap that I have accumulated over the past year. It's embarrassing how much garbage I've allowed into my house. "Hey Dave, I have this dresser, would you like it?"

"Hey Dave, I have this mangled bicycle, perhaps it would make a nice decoration in your house?"

All things of this nature were getting shipped out to the dump, and I was not a happy camper. My friend TJ and I got dressed up in our dirty wear. I threw on a guido-esque, oil-stained, white tank top, blue jeans and Yankees cap. I don't remember how TJ was dressed. I don't check out other men.

Okay, he was also dressed like he just crawled out from under a hole. We looked like a paesan and goomba, with Long Island Jewish accents.

The two of us loaded up the van and headed to the dump. Once we were finished throwing everything away, I suddenly realized that I no longer have a couch in my house. And so, I did what any normal local would do. I went yard sailing.

Of course, it wasn't until Sagaponack that I saw a sign for a yard sale. "Holy crap!!! There is a yard sale in Sagaponack! This is going to be unbelievable."

"Dude, we should not walk around Sagaponack dressed like this. Especially driving in a van. Somebody is going to call the police on us."

"TJ, do you have any idea how amazing a yard sale in Sagaponack is? These people don't care, they just want to get rid of their stuff for new stuff. I could redecorate my whole place because of this luck."

I followed the sign, ripped the van around and zoomed into the $1 million per square yard piece of real estate and yard sale heaven that is Sagaponack. But to my despair, the signs kept leading me to empty roads with no yard sales. I kept doing U-turns and was driving up and down Main Street. I was getting frustrated and worried. It was pushing 5 p.m. now.

"I'm going to ask somebody if they know where it is," I said and I pulled the van up next to a woman jogging. There we were, two men, weighing 200 lbs each, driving sleeveless in a van in Sagaponack, asking this handsome female jogger where a yard sale was. You can guess how this went. "Hey, excuse me, Miss?"

She peripheral-visioned me and then sped up and turned hard down Beech Street.

I wasn't about to give up just yet. I was just imagining Martha Stewart standing outside on a lawn with a brand new couch set just waiting for me to take it off her hands.

"Maybe it's over here."

I turned into the private community known to surfers as the Georgica Estates. Within minutes, an old man pulled up to me in a Mercedes. "You guys need help?"

"Yes, I'm looking for the yard sale."

"Well there isn't one in here. This is a private community and I don't want you here," and before I could give him the finger, he sped off.

I was feeling pretty defeated and also unwelcome, and then another woman went by us and I was filled with glory. "Miss? Do you know where the yard sale is?"

She took off her iPod buds, "Why yes I do..." She smiled and ran off. What a wonderful human being.

I pulled into the Sagaponack estate to find remnants of a yard sale. There were maybe two things out on the lawn, the rest, I guessed, were hidden inside of a garage.

"They're closed, dude, I can see everything is under the tarp, let's go," TJ said.

"I'm going to knock on the door."

As I approached the door, I imagined a Charlton Heston/Hugh Hefner type of guy answering it with a giant 12-gauge shotgun asking me what the hell I was doing on his property with the 12-gauge pointed right at my head. After all, this was the country and TJ was right, I didn't look like your typical Sagaponackian.

I got an adrenaline rush. I'm risking my life for a cheap couch, I thought. God, I'm such a Jew.

But the woman that answered my knock was wonderful and nice. She was a middle-aged woman dressed in a bathrobe, looking as if she just got out of the shower. I introduced myself and explained why I was dressed poorly and the ordeal I just went through to get to her yard sale and she smiled, "You just missed it, we have some other things that we were going to sell tomorrow, but now everything has been moved into the garage. I looked at the garage with my imaginary x-ray vision and I saw the living room set, I saw a new bathroom, I saw a king size bed. "I'll be back," I said, Terminator 2 style, and waved goodbye.

As I left, I lost my balance and accidentally landed on the lawn, but then immediately jumped back onto the walkway.

"It's so nice to see a young man that was raised right." She said to me.

I smiled and walked off and decided then and there that the people of Sagaponack are wonderful.