Gabe Durham - Fun Camp

Last year, I didn’t do like I said. I said I was going to change and for awhile I did change but then I went back. I went back to what I was before I changed without even realizing I’d gone back. Sometimes I would remember I had changed and would try to change back to how I had changed and then I would change again. But my friends would not see the change, or else they would see the change but they wouldn’t like the change because we had made friends before the change, and they would try to change me back. So I would change back. Now being back here has reminded me that I really do want to change, and what I want this time is to change for good. And I want you all to hold me accountable and in exchange I will hold you accountable. I feel really bad that I didn’t change before. Really, really bad. Thank you.

In half a year, the Caucasians among you will be more so. On the front end of winter, we’ll spend Christmas nursing our generosity, New Years kissing it goodbye. On the back end, we coast through Ash Wednesday fine if we notice it at all, spend Easter wearing the colors we’ve painted our eggs. It’s between the first snow and the last time Dad runs his salty white car through the wash that you won’t believe there was ever a summer, ever an us here together now. As the arc of your relationship to snow begins to mirror that of the romances the facially symmetrical among you are cooking up now, you’ll have to try to float on those perennial comforts: Friends who wait outside your house so they can shock you with something wet, stinging shops whose temperature regulators overcompensate for what the outside is up to, satellite electronics, parents at jobs, oversleeping, sugar drinks, the taste of fruits whose vacillating prices you won’t notice until the day it’s you doing the buying. I say this not to ease the shock of winter but to ease the shock over the shock. The sooner you realize winter is annual, the sooner you’ll buckle down on those grades and start dreaming of a college in the never-fading sun of some golden country.

I hate you, Tad. You don’t just introduce yourself to a girl on the dock and chat her up about the little podunks you’re both from, discover how much you’ve got in common, sit real close, get the crazy idea you and her ought to run off the dock in all your clothes, jump hand in hand in the lake, together invent new swim-stokes, laugh lots, thank the girl for the swim, and then go ask some slut like Helena Johnson on the Midnight Hike. As if you didn’t feel that once-in-a-campweek connection with the girl on the dock! As if you had a realer talk with Helena Johnson! Did you know that until last month she had a boyfriend three years older than her and that they did about everything you can do together that isn’t technically sex? She told me the first night here. So it’s not just that you’re picking her over me, it’s that you’re willing to risk contracting some sexually nasty infections by just kissing her. And yet what kills me is I know you won’t. You’re untouchable. You’re Tad Gunnick. As I write this, you and a semi-circle of hangers-on are headed for the pool with Bee Gees on repeat in all your heads, so sure you’re God’s gift to strutting. And she’s Helena Johnson, spilling out of cups two letters down the alphabet from mine. And then there’s me, scrawling notes in a hot craft hut, sure to be rewarded for my abstinence with opportunities for more abstinence. Watch as it starts to look less like a choice.

*

Dear Mom,

Forget me. When the time comes, I will send for Johannes.

Billy Matthews, Cabin 3

We hit dinner in a daze, you and I, after a lively session of getting told what. Some girls cried, and we almost did too. We’d chased and caught the ecstatic moment, mistook it for a house to live in. It felt like shivers and coffee and God’s favor. The meal tasted good, pork chops and peas with rolls and red punch. And when you were made to sing a song for having elbows up on the table, you laughed and you sang — something mockable, Journey or Styx. On the verge of some big thing, we asked Dave himself if we could skip campfire so we could work out the terms of our new selves, and he said that he respected that but still felt campfire was where we needed to be. We understood and poured gravy on Doreen, who was a sport and later got us back big. At the fire, we knew Dave had been right and sang “Peaceful, Easy Feeling” and “Brown Eyed Girl” and my only earnest “Kumbaya” to date. After most had scattered, we huddled and squirted water to sizzle on the embers, too beat to talk. That was my best night, my best self, and that was three whole camps ago. What have we been doing wrong, Amber? What broke in us?

Look, everybody: We rolled out the stars for you tonight. We softened the grass. We briskened the air just enough that you’d need each other. I want so much for you as a gaggle of campers, but as individuals I can barely keep your faces in focus. As I look out on the field of you now, huddling up in your sleeping bags, I see selves feeding selves feeding selves. I see, “What do these people think of me?” and “Am I unique?” and “Am I funny?” and “Am I worthy of love?” And to all those questions, I offer a hearty resounding shrug, and I implore you, when you go home tomorrow, to watch an entire serious dramatic film on fast forward. I’m trying to do for delusion what Clark Gable did for the undershirt. There’s a confidence chemical that suddenly gets produced like crazy in puberty that explains why five-sixths of you think you know so much. Even now, as you scoff out into the night, that’s the chemical at work, and knowing about the chemical makes it no less potent. The goal is to harness that chemical and to run with it as far as you can so that when doubt catches up, you’ll be surrounded by people who angle their bodies toward you and nod brightly when you speak. I’ve got more to say — I’ve always got more to say — but for now I’m out of lozenges. Be sure and wave at me tomorrow morning before you go. I’ll keep walking, but I will see you.

Yeah, Sunday pulls the rug out from everyone. When we wake, there’s always some group from far-off already gone, goodbyes unsaid. We treat Sunday like a full day in our heads all week, but then it comes and it’s just a morning — a morning spent packing. All these suddenly-concerned boys run around looking for plastic bags to keep the moldy wet clothes that’ve been balled under the bed all week from infecting their less-moldy dry clothes. We approach each other, newly sheepish, holding copies of the group photo and sharpies, saying, “Are you going to the Fun Retreat weekend in October? I think I’m going, are you going?” We mop and squint and sing a last song. Then parents start showing up, smiling like they belong. Like they have a clue what went on here. Like they’ve ever felt a thing in their lives.

*

Dear Mom,

For much of the week, I’d forgotten how slow regular mail is. By the time you get this, I’ll have already been home for three days or so. Please disregard the last few letters. They were hasty. If my room is still available, I’d like to stay. I do ask, however, that you take a look at your schedule so we may set aside an evening when I’ll outline the changes I’d like to see our family implement in the coming quarter, such as you learning to make cornbread and us eating on the porch when it’s nice out and us getting a pool and playing kickball and having food fights and you letting me pick on Deirdre when it’s in a funny way. I look forward to returning to my room, my toys, a bathroom with a lock, and of course, Johannes. I hope you have shown him my pictures as I asked.