Gabe Durham - Fun Camp

Look left. Create personal meaning from that. No. Up a little. That. It informs you, doesn’t it? Child, do you think this is a coincidence? That I am pointing you towards meaning during exactly the time when you could use it? Don’t be coy — you know which thing. You’ve been waffling for ages and now it’s time to let what’s up and to the left step in and solve you. Break up with her, for instance. Quit that job. Convert to that holy mode. Keep that germinating baby you started. Bomb that. Cry for once. Decisions: Who are you to make them? You’re getting older at it, but better? Left and up knows best, and so do I, but don’t ask me to get specific. Consider this message a Do Not Reply in which any questions you have for me will be hurled into a void on the ocean floor. I will be elsewhere, escalating blissward, my own choices having been made in childhood by rays of light on this rocking chair we had.

Tommy, Janna, I’m going to stop you right there. Now when I say the feelings you’re describing are exceptional, I mean nuke the moon. Your account of the time spent between yesterday’s kickball game and this evening when I happened upon you in each other — all I can say is wow and God bless and cherish it because for some of us, this has never happened. Have I been in love? I would hesitate and then say yes. But there is love and there is the ineffable mountain you’re scaling. To review: you two share the same favorite show, favorite movie, favorite band, favorite song, you both run track, and you both find camp a little immature. What I need to secure from you now are two swears on this copy of Camp Bylaws for the Hearty and True that you won’t let my uninformed intrusion dampen your beginnings. There’s an expression for the look you two are giving each other: Married in our Hearts. And when such looks are exchanged between two consenters age fifteen and up, the Lord winks and turns away. So too shall I. What happens next is: I’m going for a forty-minute nature walk. You will find my cabin unlocked.

No petting. No ballpoint pens. No collared shirts in the daytime. No unearned moral clarity. No befriending townies. No slavery, including that of the puckish bet-based variety. No immediate stripping post-food fight. God, some of you, it’s like Gutter Radio is live broadcasting right into your ears, keeping you hip to the kind of life choices that mean I’m someday gonna end up buying you soup and hearing your story when I’m taking my Volvo to the collision center in the rough part of town. I was planning to put up a banner at the ranch entrance that said, “The decisions you make now will affect you later,” until a peer pointed out the lettering’s eerie resemblance to “Arbeit Macht Frei.” Speaking of frei, all camper-penned declarations of independence will be shredded unread and all participating revolutionaries are to collect trash in Friday’s first annual Shame Parade. No inter-camper secession, expulsion, exclusion, ostracization, banishment, or eviction, be it based on age, sex, cabin, clique, name, race, size, creed, shirt color, parental income, home square footage, whether or not you’ve done it, number of facial blemishes, point rating on sexiness websites, taste in music, brand of pants, sit or stand, crumple or fold, city or country, bicep circumference, calf circumference, dress size, cup size, shank length, pube count, whether your parents allow R-rated movies, humor development, past prank severity, or any other way a camper might sever the lemon of togetherness we’re attempting to incubate. More rules to come as you invent need for them.

Any dudes out there hoping to do more than stand and arm-groove during tomorrow night’s After-Dinner Digestion Dance? Well Benny Hinkle’s giving a “guys only” lesson on all the witty moves that’ll have Girls Cabin 1 laughing with you all night long. You’ll learn such essentials as the lawnmower, the weed-whacker, the hedge-trimmer, the lasso, the Scorpion, the Sub-Zero, the cliff-jumper, the ladder-climber, the beginner robot, the saucy snake, the Eli Whitney, the beginner Thriller, the beginner moonwalk, the hairstylist, the wax on /wax off, the drop it like it’s good clean fun, the flying buttress, the limbo minus limbo stick, the motorist, the escalator, the prescribing doctor, the textin’ tween, the boy band throwback, the Carlton, the Pulp Fiction, the Romy and Michele, the six-shootin’ showdown, the “remember the Macarena?” the “remember that dancing baby?” the Flight of the Hummingbird, the manic-depressive, the grocery cart pusher, and the treat-jumping puppy. If there’s time, Benny will demonstrate ways one might pepper the lag between songs with Chris Tucker quotes from the Rush Hour trilogy. And I know Benny’ll go over this in his session, but pay attention to the pulse of the room. At one point during last year’s dance, I saw three guys doing the motorist mere feet from each other. Not cool, guys. Really not cool.

Listen hard and you won’t even feel the shot, little lady.

“You’ll never know how to win,” people cried to the baseball team. It’s true, thought Al. We lose all the time, sixty, nothing.

“I sure would have fun as a grandmother,” replied Edith.

“I know, Mom,” Al said, “but women love winning.”

The year was 1920. Al practiced viola upstairs. He was on the 4 thbook and getting better.

Once, on Thursday, Mandy was passing by carrying bread. She heard Al and went up. Al was abused by his father as a boy and got sad. “You don’t know me,” Mandy declared, “but play your sad song, please.” He did, and they ate the hot bread with cheese, and he looked in her deep eyes and saw that baseball was just for fun.

Because of love, does it get any better?

Al called all the team and announced he might quit for personal purposes, and they said they might disband as a group. He did, so they did.

This place is in serious need of some sheep-goat separation. Is it too late in the week to switch from the Put Up with Goobers model to the Reality Elimination model? Picture it: Each night at campfire, every camper writes the name of the cabinmate he hates most. (In a tiebreaker, the counselor votes too.) The kid from each cabin with the most votes is then dramatically handed a cell phone, and must, in front of everyone, call his mom to have her come pick him up. Only after he confirms that his mom is on the way does the aborted camper get the chance to make a brief speech. Some will plead their fellow campers rethink the decision, others will lash out, others still may try to hurl their rejected bodies on the pyre. Whatever the case, we survivors are then free to tolerate and empathize with and even love the newly-dismissed peer in the light of their numbered-and-counting minutes with us, safe in the knowledge we’re the victors we’d always assumed we were, for once sure we’re surrounded by those who truly care for us and always will.

*

Dear Mom,

Last night, we dined on macaroni and cheese mashed up with beef chili. It was the best thing I’ve eaten in my whole life. What other combinations have you kept from me?

Billy

All around in the post-rain everywhere, such rich material for the counselor of letters: Tetherball as metaphor for marriage, flooding lake as the unconscious, the muddy soccer field as the state of our two-party system, camper restlessness as childhood, trees as forest, leaves as trees, tried as true, muddy shoes as nature vs. nurture, grazing deer as splendorous awe, catch as catch can, town candy as contraband, the fact that my campers have informally joined other cabins as history repeating itself, in-cabin dampness as desire, the sight of Sandra running in the rain as desire, thin cotton clinging to Sandra’s chilled tan skin as desire, camp as fun, fun as camp, my exclusion as popularity contest, popularity contest as loneliness, loneliness as crippling loneliness, “as” as projection, projection as a comfort, but less and less, these days.