SUMMER CAMP

There are days when all the requisite necessities of life just become too grown up hard and rather than break into a million jagged pieces of broken dreams,  I drift, as I have hundreds of times, back to camp, which, sits  along the banks of my memory, perched high atop the hill like a tail wagging dog  waiting for its master to come home.

I go back to the murmur of boy bunks, to the chirpy crickets which sang their very own anthem.  I go back to the moment when the speedboat pulled me forward like a giant magnet and up I went on skis,  trying to stay in the wake, trying not to fall, feeling, even for a few seconds like I was in flight right before I crashed, face first into the cushion of Lake Concrete.

I go back to the buddy call.   To that big floating raft in the deep end, whose cliff boys with rubber-banded nose clips leaped from like Butch and Sundance, while others clamored up the small ladder to join the soaked and sunning.

I go back to the after swim towel wrap.   The lifeguard whistle.  The bamboo rescue polls.

The flip-flop walks up the hill back.

I go back to the girls who magically reappeared as women, making a stunning entrance on day one or two, their eyes sending casual arrows towards the bull's eye of my heart.

I go back to the songs.  The romantic ones, that are distant and quaint now which in the day, in the moment,  tempered my stampeding cattle impulses and instructed me to treat love like a tender friend. 

I remember serenading a heart awake.  

Strumming the guitar like the body was her’s.

Singing melodies that seemed like they were pre-soaked in honey.

Letting the lyrics have their way with me so that the subtext of every line was, ‘I want you.”

I go back.

The gasoline scent of a muttering lawnmower.

To the tribal chant of a faraway baseball game.

I go back to rest period, wearing socks, belly on the bed, handwriting letters like ancient scribes, with pens, crafting messages that would entertain and inform and most of all show gratitude.

I go back to making the pilgrimage to the head counselor’s shack to pick up a package from home.

There was nothing better than the sight of that brown wrapped just for me gift that sat like an antsy toddler on the bench, just waiting for me to scoop it up.

It held such promise and hope. There before me was a tactile memory.  A piece of mom and dad.  A show of love that seemed profound at the moment.

Opening it was like lifting the lid of a treasure chest.  Inside was an impossible delight.  A few Twilight Zone paperbacks.  Comic books.  Candy.  And most of all a handwritten daffy-happy note from mom, whose every word simply wanted to leap right off the page and devour you.

I go back.

The raising of the flag, usually by the hand-selected hero of the day.  Someone who had scored the winning run or, in my case, had just given a stellar performance in a camp version of a Broadway musical play.

The day began and ended with the flag.  It went up alongside our expectations and was lowered like a parachute where it never touched the ground.

The flag, like so many other things then, had meaning.  We loved that flag almost as much as we loved that package from home.

I go back because we had heroes then.  Sports figures.  Astronauts.  Presidents.

Part of not having to worry about life then came from the knowledge that there were so many bigger than life men who were stationed out there, always standing watch over us

I go back because that is where I went to escape.

Camp was a different dimension of time and space that was regulated by sunlight, dictated by weather and protected by an invisible wall that surrounded us with a kind of safety that I have never felt again.

It almost felt like fairies would fare well there.

Because we were up in the Catskills, the mountains blocked radio signals like defensive linemen, so we did not hear music playing anywhere until nighttime when I would gently coax the wire hanger antenna of my radio until I could find WABC, whose signal wobbled like reggae.  The signal would not last, but occasionally it hung around until I could hear the just released new Beatles song like the appropriately named Hello, Goodbye.

I go back.

To sweat and suntan lotion.

To cuts and accidents.

To fireside s'mores and Cropsy stories.

To the armistice of free play, where brothers and sisters, girlfriends and boyfriends slowed down and walked like visiting dignitaries in quiet circles.

To the white rock, where Jeff and I, a bookend of guitar singing bad boys, would harmonize from the heart.

I go back to losing my virginity on the floor of the old canteen.  There amidst Spiderman worthy cobwebs and dust bowl filth, I became a man.

I remember at the precise moment thinking, “Wait a minute. This feels familiar. Have I done this before?”

I loved her then.  She was blonde, had green emerald eyes and a shock of blonde Farah hair.

We were the lucky ones who were raised to really love women.  Like women.  Want to be with women.

Everything seemed to move according to plan.

That’s how much we trusted life in those days.

The sun always fell like a timid ballerina into the manmade lake.

The stars, just like the girls we adored, loved to be stared at.

I go back.

To sleeping on top of my blanket so I would not have to make my bed the next morning.

I go back to picking up the laundry bags which seemed to be airdropped from god knows where, ripping them open to discover that all our whites had become pink, thanks to those red shorts.

I go back to walk, towel-wrapped, with plastic soap boxes in hand, to the shower house, which always made me uneasy, because it suddenly felt like I was suddenly in Concentration Camp Dalmaqua.     Everything I supposed was a group event then.  We did little, if anything, by ourselves.  There was no “me” time.  Just “we time.”

I go back to all the rituals.

The clamor of the dining room where skinny, put-upon waiters were yelled at like rowers on a slave ship.  Meals were not a relaxing thing.  It was feeding time for the animals who seemed to subsist on bug juice and fatty meat and something that reminded you of pizza.

I go back because I became a citizen of an exclusive universe that had it’s own rules and language and expectations.

I go back so I can take another trip to Montreal to visit Expo which felt like an extension of our private community.

I go back to go skate circles in ancient wood rinks, where, when I was around ten or so,  I skated with my future girlfriend who I would lose my virginity to, whose front teeth I accidentally knocked out when we fell backward and my foot went right for the future crowns.

I go back to visiting day when our parents arrive like they were headed for Lourdes, looking surprisingly relaxed and happy.  Mom cried, but mom always cried.  She could have made a killing as a professional mourner.  Dad was like a shy intern, doing his obligatory rounds, sending silent messages through winks and nods, that he loved me.

I remember showing them around like I was a real estate salesman, trying to win them over.

Everyone was different on visiting day.  We were formal and polite with each other as if we had all received and cracked the code that informed us to act abnormally.  

It was all one big PR show.  What we were hiding were the moments that we were Lord of the Flies horrible to each other or to that one hapless nerd, like Paul Becker, who was eventually banished, with his deeply sad best friend: a heaving accordion, to the sanctuary of the shower house, where he played Fernando’s Hideaway and basically lived the life of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. 

And yet I’m sure we were all as polite as hell to Paul’s folks.

We pulled terrible pranks.

Humiliated the weak.

Pulled rank.

Made arrogant circles.

Not everyone was the recipient of a happy summer.

Including me a few times, once when one year we had a sadistic counselor who flicked cigarettes at us and treated us like we were prisoners in Internment Camp Dalmaqua.

For the most part, we grew to become a family of two or three hundred.

We played roles in shows, went to war over colors, and often sang together like we were in the Jewish version of a gospel church.

I go back to hike through the woods.  To taste the cold metal pouted lip of my canteen as water flow through me like a sudden downpour.

I go back to get high in those very same woods, where I would float back to my bunk like Jerry Garcia hitching a ride.  I remember the taste of a hash pipe, occasionally burning my lip, the woodsy scent flowing up my hose like a geyser.

I go back to lie on all the sleeping bags that slept in the closet.  

I go back to taste the rusty water from the bathroom sink.

I go back because it will all be there, on demand, waiting for me.

I go back to remember what it was like, in the end, in the final waning days of summer, when it felt like the war was won and we were about to be shipped home.   A wooden plaque would memorialize us, with all our names painted on—including nicknames like “Fuji,”  “Creampuff,”  “Beetle” and “Moose.”

I never had a nickname, though the owner of the camp, who took great delight in my antics, called me “Boris Tomashevsky.”  

I go back because sometimes moving forward is just too hard and painful.

But we are going to be pulled no matter what.

Just like when we were on skis when the motorboat controlled the center of our gravity and dared us to find our own inner balance and courage.

I go back to go back.

To be there.

To hear the music of MASH-like announcements.

To get phone calls from home.

When my parents were still alive and couldn’t wait to talk to me.