Fun Camp (6 page)

SUGGESTION

Some kind of gong to bang when a skit’s got to stop.

HOP IN

Human restlessness is such that I could slide open the door to the church Econoline, shout, “Who wants to drive around with busted AC looking for a no-ethanol gas station?” or “Who wants to go get free examinations from the unlicensed proctologist?” or “Who’s ready to try that burger place in town that replaces the buns with chunky peanut butter?” and still I’d fill the van and leave a hoard of angry dust-kickers in my wake. Why? Because everybody knows the best camp activities are those rich with mnemonic potential, and memories remain longest when attached to changes of scenery. As in, “One time we piled into a van and . . . what did we? Oh! It was the day Greg taught us the game of licking Big Red wrappers to see who can keep one slapped to his forehead the longest. And I won! I can still feel the spice searing my skin.” Pain’s the second trick. Frothy fun is nice in the moment but some hurt sure helps a memory to stick. Each winter, my right ring finger starts to throb and I think,
Oh yeah, summer of oh-four, finger caught in the van door’s line of fire just after Mary Charles turned down my invitation to go on the Midnight Hike together. I was after a conciliatory half-cherry half-cola Slurpee and despite injuries sustained, I got one.

LIKE THE SALMONELLA & BROWNIE BATTER THING

I agree it’s unfair that some kid somewhere choked—a precocious little weed cut short before et cetera, but the greater loss is that she took Chubby Bunny to the grave with her. Every six minutes a kid drowns in the kidney pool that made his family suddenly popular, and yet I swam for two hours today, played Chicken Fight most of that time, and if I’d died, you wouldn’t’ve see mine or anybody else’s parents calling up to get the pool slabbed over in my memory. But one kid—
one kid
—chokes on a mouthful of mallow and the mollycoddlers get a beloved tradition banned for life, one where the risk was part of the excitement in the first place. Listen to these rules pretending you’ve never heard them before: Each player puts a big marshmallow in his mouth, does not swallow, says “chubby bunny,” adds another big marshmallow, says “chucky bucky,” adds another, tries not to choke, says “chuh-ee uh-ee,” and stuffs in another one or five or thirteen until one player is left standing. Remind you of any other games with the word Chicken in the title? Players worried about asphyxiation turn back early, spit their goo into a bucket, and hit the water fountain. Those who want to win proceed. Without the risk, Chuh-ee Uh-ee would be nothing at all: kid stuff.

SANDRA EXEGETES

This is the first year, girls, I’ve had to explain to my cabin that “be real” does not mean sulk around in your sighberry eyeliner. We’re all tired. We’re supposed to be tired. After a half-hour of in-bunk flashlight tag, sticking a couple of hands in a warm water bowl, and a spooky forbidden round of Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board, we’re looking at a low 5.5 hours per night. Good luck finding a way around it. A woman’s greatest knack is how well she can hide how much sleep she’s been missing. There’s a little tally board inside each of us labeled, “Number of days since someone has told me I look tired” that resets itself whenever we make the mistake of looking like we feel. And the alternative? Even if you fulfill obligations, party like you mean it, and somehow get your sleep, your decisions will be too well-informed to be spontaneous. You’ll never be susceptible to life. And that goes double for this week, divas. We don’t need your gears shifting at full speed, we need you able to hold your foot behind your head.

COMPLAINT

Every time I love someone, you set them free.

ALL THE ARMIES OF MY BOOT

Nobody blames you, demon. You show a deep passion. You work long hours. But you must’ve had an inkling: How many pentagrams did you think we’d allow on one girl’s bedpost? On how many summer days did you think gloves would hide your sloppy stigmatas before a staff member figured out something was up? Hey now. Let’s not make this into a thing. Tears aren’t evil. Show your grit with a stoic exit. You can give Susie a last shiver if you want, take a last look through her tiny windows, whisper a final corrosive in her ear. She will miss you at times. Back-talking will sting when she sees whom she’s hurting. Whipped cream on steak will lose appeal. Flirting with rebels will still an entirely different set of voices. I was thinking I’d let you cast yourself out—there’s dignity in that—but get yourself gone by the end of the workday. I’d let you finish out the week but we need her bubbly for tomorrow’s relay. Hold up your head when you get back home—the other demons are in your same sad boat. They wouldn’t be in Hell if they hadn’t done something wrong. Nobody there wasn’t caught failing.

*

Dear Mom,

It’s dawning on me, the disadvantage I’m at not having been raised in a bilingual household.

Billy

TWO DAYS, FOURTEEN HOURS

All it takes is a glance out the craft hut window to imagine the real party that must be happening up in the cold, I’m talking
cold
, mesosphere right now, daily burning through meteors like 30-packs of Keystone, and to picture how unconvincing our in-the-moment expressions must seem from up there. But down here, the alternative is dim and bratty and nothing I want to look at. Had this one kid who kept trying to hide up in his bunk before activities, lying real still like I wouldn’t notice, offering bribes when I collected him by force and sat him beside me. Then a switch flipped. He had this great night at skits, laughing louder than anybody, and became self-sufficient for half a day. Now every time I see him, he makes this bittersweet face and tells me how many days and hours of camp are left cause he doesn’t want to go home. I can empathize, the way trying to live in the moment is like trying to find the button that turns off the reverb on the karaoke machine. I had a couple of his cabinmates heave that kid in the pool with his clothes on, but there’s only so much one counselor can do to drown out a kid’s brain’s wants.

PASS ME THAT FLASHLIGHT

A woman was killed in a wreck at the tunnel five years ago tonight. She died in the snow from the fire, drowned, her spirit condemned to wander the waterways, weeping and searching for her children until the end of time. After what seemed like hours, she heard a far off bugle blast, and then silence. Her baby was still alive. Was he looking for his head? She went home and collapsed into bed, wondering what happened to the man on the motorcycle. The next morning, she went to the bathroom, and there, scrawled on the mirror in blood:
I am the viper. I’m on the fifth floor.
She realized then that the old man at the gas station had been trying to warn her. To this day, the light of her torch still can be seen on stormy nights. To this day, the fathers of the village wear scars as a reminder. To this day, La Malhora appears at the crossroads whenever someone is going to die. That baby was my daughter. That psycho was me.

FRIDAY

*

Dear Mom,

Let us not fear death. There is too much to do while yet on this earth.

Billy

GROGG CORNERS A CAMPER

Peek here, progeny.
You got slacks to tell me I can’t strafe into my own square yardage with a rage-gage sport-slick auto-rotation twelve-forty and pluck me up something for the spit? I respect you’re unalert to the factuals. Fair as fare, sure—you’re up in your tusk spire, not knowing how my days roll out, thinking up muck to hock. It get cold up there, Senator? There’s an honor in my twelve you don’t cohere. A subset of somesuch would be
lucky
to go out with permanence by means of my craft. If I’m a monkey—and there’s exhibits to the situals—then at some point the critters of this greenscape globe ought to learn themselves some avoidance procession. What we cannot abide is weakness by and by. Critters. Heh, heh. “Ooh, look at me. So mystic in my fur. Think I’ll prostate myself in this smoothie-black road and see what shakes.” Well what you won’t do is pass on no dumbslick spunk, Thumper. And so the cyclone ongoes.

CAMPFIRES: AN UNPROMPTED HISTORY

These days we’ll do a “Pirate’s Cove” theme one year, “Adventure Inland” the next, then something controversial like “A Week at the Movies” before returning to “Pirate’s Cove,” but there was a time when Indians were the theme, the pull, the selling point of every camp in the nation. Boys slept in teepees and arrowed straw buffalos. Each camp had a brave to call its own, right there on the front of the pamphlet. Solemn full-headdress Indian was more fun, plainclothes nature survivalist Indian had more dignity. Later, due to the rightful concerns of the Moms, natives were replaced by safe whites in redface who’d hung around the real thing for a long weekend, taking notes. My own Pap used to polish his face up burnt orange then monotone to the kids about the tribal councils, the first Thanksgiving, headdress color combos, names that’re almost sentences, swinging from trees to cover tracks when pursued, and of nightly meetings at the burning council ring. Some bits were of disputed authenticity, like the ole hand over mouth “wa-wa-wa,” but it was loud and felt great to do. Great enough that everybody felt their racism shedding, letting themselves think of Indians as this far off dodo dream. But then the soldiers killed Hitler, came on home, squinted at how their boys got funny, and we soon cut the teepees and resident redman from the prop roster. We scrubbed the campfires white and used them for their hypnotic potential, for singing Eagles hits, for life-changing emotional appeals, for tales of hook-handed lady-scrapers.
They were too pretty to discontinue, too much fun, and budding girls looked too good in their light.

ICE-BREAKER

So I say the situation then you each say what you’d do. You’re flummoxed in a locked zoo at night, in boots and a knit cap but otherwise bare, there’s been a drought, you and she have just this evening had a tough talk after which it’s clear that you’re the one who loves her more. Sleep eludes you, it’s a leap year, the baby test came back “baby,” the zoo’s owner is a registered sex offender and he’s told you more about it than law demands, money is thankfully not an issue, the cages have all been opened, the electric fences have been down since the storm, you had a reasonably happy childhood, and you’re allowed to pick two of the following: a flashlight, a mirror, self-assurance, compassion, a full moon, a phone call, a decoy, a harpoon, passable French, a walkman, batteries, a map, and a clue. The first part of my question isn’t a question: I’m so sorry to have put you in this position. The second part of my question, on the condition that you are man enough to let her go: I will love the child as if it were my own.

QUESTION

I feel like we’re missing some campers. Are we missing some campers?

MY FACE HURTS

It’s so hard to command emotions, Fun Camp! It just is. But we believe, don’t we, that commanding the good ones, like, “I’m having a smiling time in the managed danger of this hot field,” is a shot at actually feeling happy and that commanding the bad ones, like, “I’m hungry,” or “Trees suck,” or “Fire in the building!” is a shot at nothing at all? Unless it’s Oscar season? Put another way: Is fake it ‘til you make it just for job interviews, or for when flossing too? Or still another: Which would win the genuine face pageant: The “everything is good and ends badly” face? The “not getting as much sleep as I’d prefer” face that’s so popular around here? Or is it the one that implies, as the young pop star once declared at the receipt of her own Commander of Bad Feelings award, that
this world is bullshit
? God, I hope not. How embarrassing for the friendly and what a coup for the sultry. My closest approximation of sultry is pouty, and I never think I’m being pouty when I’m being pouty. How Holly reminds me I’m being pouty is by telling me it’s important to try and enjoy this. This being anything, whatever’s in front of us.

PATTERN I NOTICED

At a belief club meeting, a newcomer asks a question so elemental that the members laugh, delighted, having forgotten it could be asked. The newcomer squirms and the members are quick to apologize. They applaud her marksmanship, her rigor. Then they secure a time for the next week’s meeting. They’re not trying to dodge the question. They think they’ve answered it.

QUICK ANNOUNCEMENT BEFORE LUNCH

A word to the cultists—yes, you in your robes, the boys who cried apocalypse: We’re pulling the plug. It’s a little solipsistic to have witnessed a few distant mushroom-like smoke clouds and assume a wrecked world, parents all dead, and that God has chosen the innocents of Fun Camp for a new Eden. All you tittering fence-sitters: Think it’s an accident this new one true faith came from Boys Cabin 1? Continuation of the species is man’s oldest pickup line. I’m sure the gophers you blood-sacrificed would be real happy to learn their deaths are wrapped up in the wet dreams of some teenage would-be Christs. Speaking of, Jason, you’re paying for that tablecloth you’re wearing, and Tad, whose 501s did you massacre to make that Jesus sash? You look like runner-up in a West Virginia beauty pageant. Who’s booing? Hey—who was just booing? Any more of you want to make a midnight raid on the iPhone closet, you’ll find I’ve moved the phones to an undisclosed site and the batteries to the vault under the snack shack. Nature-knowing is about avoidance and you’re all too wrecked to get there alone. You’ve got fifty-one weeks out of the year to check your scores and count your dead. Surrender this one to fun.