Gabe Durham - Fun Camp

For those who know what I’m about to be getting at, don’t say it and don’t do it. For those who don’t know, you will, and don’t do it when you do. You who are do’s, don’t tell the don’ts what it is, for knowledge increases temptation. Don’t tell tips or lend lotions. You don’ts, don’t ask. Don’t want to ask. Golly, this is dicey, trying to avoid inflaming the imagination. People didn’t have these problems pre-Gutenberg, but once printing got going, Olde Britain was overrun with pamphlet after pamphlet of suggestions to allegedly help a woman conceive: Don’t pull out early. Don’t move after. You might not get that holy blessing you so fervently desire if you were to stand, dress, and make your way expediently to the outhouse. Now look where we’re at: hell in a ham garden. But not you boys, right? Tidy the homes of your minds. Avoid complete dictionaries. Never agree you’re eighteen. If a do starts to tell you don’ts, leave the do. I’m a do who wants to be a don’t, but once the apple’s bit, as they say. The girls? Off with Bernadette talking menstruation. They bleed out themselves. Don’t dwell on it.

I thought up a game where the players all die but you did too so what’s the point. But then there’s this other game called The Game You Are Playing Whether You Say So or Not where we raise our arms and shout, “We win! We win! We win!” Everybody shouting wins, but the biggest winner is the one most convinced that we win. Easy to pick up, and yet each time the game is played there are over 7 billion losers, many of whom don’t even know to feel bad for it. Which if that doesn’t piss you off now, it will. After a real close game, we tailgate awhile and head into town in the truck bed, flashing honkers, then park in the street and play teeball with the neighborhood’s decorative mailboxes. It’s not a perfect system but it carries a message. Truthfully? We wouldn’t let the locals play even if they wanted to. Any of them tried to raise an arm — buddy, they’d lose it.

Question, Dave. At what age is it appropriate to stop dreaming of the year I sweep the Nobels, and really hunker down and specialize on the talent that’s gonna win me international acclaim and sex? Fourteen? Eighteen? Six? I got to tell you, nothing discourages the ambitious twelve-year-old like a bilingual Japanese fifth grader who gets onstage at skits, all humble and nervous, and busts fiery concertos out her violin like it’s nothing, or like a linguist mom who tells me that if I were to make it my life’s pursuit to learn the little fiddle prodigy’s primary language, it’s already too late for my brain to pick up on the nuances necessary for fitting in. I’m too late to dominate at something, aren’t I? If I’m too late, it’s fine, I just need to hear you say it so I can transition out of having goals and start nudging whoever’s beside me at skits and going, “Yeah, but at least I’ve got a life.” Or, wait, “Yeah, but at least I’ve got a life .” Well. Not there yet. I’ll work on it.

Concocting as to the present of outfromers in the habitat beyond, I say to you yes and surely. “If the parking lot’s spacious,” Tad Gunnick once spat, “folks’re gonna neck and do donuts.” Or to coin it in your terms, budder: You got the booze, you’re gonna cruise. But then I think of what if the beyonder folks are just real okay with how things are and don’t suspect of me and wouldn’t care if they did. That tears up my gut. Worst case happens, we hurl half of us off into the open lot of space and each slog our soils for ages, break contract, each turn the color of what we eat, forget each other, rethink, rebuff, rebuild, then invite the other us back home. We’d whistle over accents, maybe war awhile, breed. What a kick! But we hope instead for real deal outfromers, meaning what I said only way longer ago, before our cells got divorcing. Nightly I twirl behind the shack to entice outfromers in case. Quarterly I put up a sign on the roof: The Parking is Amber and Free on Weekends. And all the literals from town come neck and do donuts and prove my point.

*

Dear Mom,

I’m daring to ask a lot of big questions this week. I thought you should know.

Billy

I have always been baffled by words — how people hold you to things you’ve said just because you said them. “Wheelchair Accessible,” for example, is nothing but a beautiful, meaningless expression until it is suddenly, unexpectedly a promise.

It’s a smell you’ll learn to anticipate. In fact, a seasoned camper can gage what day of the week it is based on how badly her eyes tear up when she’s passing Boys Cabin 4. These lads, just on the cusp of caring that they reek, will for now resist any calls to sanitation in the hope that hygiene is just another inane adult imposition like sugar limits and seatbelts. Mind you, these are the same boys who by next year will have overdone it in the opposite direction: unnecessary daily shaving and aftershaving, showering before and after anything, sniffing at each other’s deodorants in quest of the one that really gets it done, dousing cologne, checking their pits when they think no one’s looking, and balking at any activity that threatens their crisp pointy hair. A phase no less annoying than the one they’re in now, but far easier to ignore. Since it’s Wednesday, the boys still feel like their stink is some great secret they’re getting away with, but give them a couple of days. They’ll grim up and bathe once their mold colds kick in.

One deck chair per camper. No running around the pool except during barefoot poolside relays. Don’t rub your eyes when you get chlorine burn. All swimmers must first pass the Deep End Test, which is ten questions, true or false, regarding the history of the deep end. During Sharks n’ Minnows, no actual biting. During Marco Polo, no not saying “Polo.” Don’t call staff over to watch your synchronized swimming routine unless you’re really gonna nail it. Splashing encouraged. Mild dunking encouraged. No more than three people on the water slide ladder at a given time. Be super-careful when stand-sliding down the water slide. One handy tip: Pool water doesn’t quench like you’d hope. No swimming for thirty minutes after the midwives of the nearby townie birthing center commandeer the pool. No ogling the lifeguards too obviously. Swim trunks should rest one half-inch below the bellybutton at all times. No two-piece, flesh tone, neon, or writing-on-the-butt swimsuits. No boys showing girls which way the gym is. It’s confusing and hurtful — there is no gym. Same-sex pantsing only, please. That rule always gets some groans, but thank your stars you’re even allowed in the same pool with each other. It wasn’t so long ago the elders on our abstinence committee called coed swim “mixed bathing,” a term so imbued with erotic stigma, boys used to mess themselves at the sight of a deep end.

I’m glad at least you’re having fun. Two years ago camp was mild weather always, singing nonstop and everybody so into it, funner games, better food, better theme, cuter boys, more impactful lessons, older kids you could tell were considered cool at school, extremer pranks. This girl Maggie Reed bled so hard when the pail of milk they rigged up to fall on her head didn’t tip like it was supposed to. Twenty stitches. So far this year, we’ve seen only the kind of injuries healed with a wash, a kiss, and a band-aid, or if there’ve been good spills I’ve missed them. I swear even the outside smelled fresher two years ago. In a way, it’s got to be easier for you, not having been here for Fun Camp’s good years. How does one explain the savory tang of a ripe strawberry to the girl with no taste buds? But even you must vaguely discern the “late to the party” flavor of last night’s freezer-burned fish sticks. Best for us to just pass free time here on the porch, tan, snack, call out slurs to the phonies strolling by, and let this dismal excuse for an off-year blow over.