Camp Sleepaway camp is often hailed as a place where American children, narcotized by a diet of blinking screens and corn syrup, can awaken to the pleasures that suburbia has obscured. It is a place where they can identify birdsongs, and navigate canoes, and earnestly study animal droppings. It is also where, far from home, they can allow the humiliations of the past to melt away for a few glorious weeks. At camp, they need not mention the time they failed Math, or whiffed with the bases loaded, or had their pants yanked down in the cafeteria. Or, even better, they can improve on the truth, turning that strikeout into a bases-clearing triple. For those campers who are entering the bewildering grind of adolescence, this aspect of the camp experience is perhaps the most valuable. I say this because I spent many summers at a camp tucked deep in the woods of upstate New York. In my first few years there, when the lights were out and the counselors were away, the cabin would fill with talk of sports, comic books, and wild apes that were rumored to live in the forest. But in my fourth summer there, as a twelve-year-old, the late-night talks became decidedly less innocent. From the very first night, our stories and conversations were almost exclusively about girls: what was best about them, what was worst about them, and, most importantly, what we had “done” with them in the past year. Despite this intense new interest in females, I had never come anywhere near actually kissing one. I was certain that none of my cabinmates had, either, but we felt a bizarre need to impress one another. The result was a series of stories that made those Adirondack gorillas seem plausible: Graham, a skinny Long Islander, told a disjointed anecdote about getting “first base and a bootie squeeze” on a Halloween hayride. Tim, a sleepy-eyed kid from suburban Detroit, relied on a vague story about “almost gettin’ it” in a movie theatre. Little Andy, with the massive braces and permanently messy hair, talked of “Mary” and, oddly, “this thing she did with her foot.” Not wanting to seem behind the curve, when it was my turn, I nervously boasted of a pair of breasts that I had fondled at a “spin-the-bottle” party. The story was paper-thin, poorly conceived, and pieced together with details skimmed from Teen Wolf, but I was never forced to defend it. Outside of the occasional ribbing or “yeah, right,” the group kept a respectful critical distance from each story—after all, too much protest would only lead to scrutiny of your story—and you wouldn’t want that. Besides, the harsh reality of daytime was doing enough to reinforce the truth. The camp had gone co-ed in the early nineties, and no amount of literary invention could hide the fact that none of the girls at the bottom of the far-sloping hill had the slightest interest in any of us. On the rare occasions that we saw them, we became shy and childish—nothing like the playboys who populated the hayrides and movie theatres of our stories. When we passed the clusters of girls returning from the softball field, or heading to the lake, the most that any of us received was a dull glance—and even that was probably accidental. We were a mediocre bunch, and I was the mediocre-ist of all. Although I had been named “Mr. Second Base” because of my ludicrous story, it was obvious that no boob had ever touched my hand. I parted my brown hair severely, my stomach pooched out in a way that didn’t jibe with the rest of my body, and my wardrobe was ill-fitting, despite its heavy focus on sweatpants. In school, my only “relationship” had lasted four days, and ended when the girl’s best friend, acting as her agent, dumped me over the phone. Aside from that, I had asked out one other girl, and had received a polite, crushing rejection in return. That was the sum total of my romantic career. But despite my pitiful track record back home—and a grim knowledge that I was, at best, fair to middling—I was developing a crush on the most beautiful girl in camp. Her name was Erica Ciporski, and although her name made her sound like a Polish aerobics instructor, she was actually Indian-skinned, with dark, flowing hair. She stood out among her sunburned campmates, and whenever I saw her laughing in the girls’ dining hall, or swatting a ball on the tennis courts, I found myself staring. She was, I thought, the most beautiful girl that I had ever seen. The more I saw her, the more I thought about her; and the more I thought about her, the surer I became that approaching her would end in embarrassment. But I still wanted her—whatever that meant to someone who was, at the time, as sexually inexperienced as a paper clip. As the month wore on, I became a prolific producer of cheesy movie scenes that starred the two of us. While the rest of my cabin drifted off to sleep, I lay awake, picturing us, for some reason, out on the tetherball court, where I dazzled her with the strength of my whapping. Or we were drifting slowly across the lake, her laughing at one of my wry jokes as I expertly manned the oars. Or, my personal favorite: the two of us, just on the edge of the woods, wrapped in embrace and necking grotesquely under the stars. I would have liked for these things to actually happen, but the days—filled with bad archery, chaotic soccer, and forced lanyard production—were passing quickly. The end of the month was coming, and my will to subject myself to humiliation was gaining no strength. As the final week slipped past, I became resigned to the fact that any romance between Erica Ciporski and me would exist only as a lame prepubescent fantasy. On the last morning, I dragged my duffelbag down to the dining hall with the rest of my cabin. I dropped it next to the Econovan that would be driving the three hours to a North Jersey parking lot, where I would meet my mom, officially signaling the end of One More Summer. I felt a narrow spectrum of maudlin emotions—melodramatic reluctance to leave my camp friends, exaggerated sadness to be returning back to school, and, of course, Shakespearean grief to have missed my chance with my brown-skinned Juliet. I tried to enjoy breakfast with the guys, but the pallor of leaving hung over us all, making even Graham’s milk-through-the-nose trick seem uninspired. I caught a glimpse of Erica as she took a pitcher of juice from the kitchen counter, but I was resolute in my not-caring. The summer was over. I drank some orange juice, ate some soggy Corn-Flakes, and waited for my name to be called from the van list. When it was, I felt tears well up, and I walked out of the high-ceilinged room, waving and shaking hands as if I was launching for D-Day. I was the first one called, and after checking in with the driver, I threw myself into the back row of the van. The air inside was warm and stale, and I cracked open the triangular window as I waited for my fellow Jerseyans. A few younger kids tumbled out of the dining hall, followed by a chubby older guy, and a rich kid known primarily for his $300 tennis racket. This is the worst, I thought. There would be nobody to crack wise with or throw things at. I watched idly as a tiny girl handed her Barbie backpack to the driver, and scooched over to make way for the chubby kid, who was breathing heavily and holding a stack of Peter Porker: Spider-Ham comics. I grunted hello, then turned back to see Erica Ciporski walking straight towards the van. My mind choked on itself. Wait—was she coming in here? She was on the other side of the glass, talking to the driver as he nodded at his clipboard. A feeling of minor nausea waved through me, and I stared as she pointed out her suitcase, then made her way to the van’s open side door. She was definitely coming in, and even though I had spent the whole month dreaming of being with her, all I could think of now was escape. As if trying to ward off a bee, I sat wide-eyed and rigid as the van pulled out of the lot. Incredibly, Erica had sat directly in front of me, and a curl of her long hair was now hanging down, almost touching my knee. She made small talk with the girl next to her, oblivious to the terror she was causing me. I tried to divert myself with the antics of Spider-Ham, but I couldn’t concentrate with that hair, and the person attached to it, so close. Her voice—which I realized I’d never really heard before—had an attractive laziness to it, and it was driving me nuts. I pictured myself clawing my way out and into the roadside woods, becoming one of those half-human creatures who the counselors tell stories about. Perhaps I’d form an uneasy alliance with the wild apes. But I stayed in my seat, and after a half-hour or so of clenched anxiety, my discomfort manifested itself in a different way: I reached up and tapped her on the shoulder. What was I doing? I had no clue; maybe a key synapse had misfired. I had no plan of attack, no plausible question for her, no witty monologue sketched out in my mind. It was suicide. I sat, with the strangled calmness of a convict strapped to The Chair, as she turned in her seat to look at me. Her face was a couple of feet from mine, and it was shockingly perfect. But so was my opening line: “Were you the Color War captain?” She looked confused. “No… why?” “Oh. No… I thought you were the Blue captain.” Slick. “Well… actually, I was thinking about it. Running for it? But then my friend Jackie wanted to be captain, so I was like, ‘okay.’” Boy, was she something. I hadn’t made any major errors yet, and I was emboldened. “Hm. What’s your name?” I asked with intense interest. “Erica.” Ah, yes, I had a hunch that was it. “I’m Jacob. Lambert.” A mildly uncomfortable moment passed, but she was still turned around in her seat. She wasn’t completely horrified. Incredibly, the conversation re-started and kept on. We talked about the bug problem in her cabin (it was gross), my Minnesota Vikings socks (they were cool), and the baseball tournament at Echo Lake (I had pitched like Steve Carlton, apparently). Although we were in a crowded van—not on the tetherball court, or in a canoe—this was even better than my late-night fantasies. I was somehow exceeding my own expectations with a real, live girl who was devastatingly great. This was new. Could I get her phone number? Could we carry on some sort of relationship? Could Erica Ciporski become my girlfriend? “I know! He’s awesome—but he looks like that guy from Mike Tyson’s Punch Out!” “Bald Bull?” “Yeah! Bald Bull!” We were laughing about Charles Barkley, but all of a sudden I felt strange and had to quiet myself. She was still smiling, but a vast, roasting heat had come over me, and I had to stop talking. I realized that I had felt this way once or twice before. “Are you okay?” Erica said with growing concern. I responded to her question with a hot, churning gout of vomit that blorched straight into my lap in a yellowness of Corn-Flake mush and orange juice. It splashed on the seat, on the floor, onto Peter Porker: Spider Ham. It was a river, and the kid next to me screamed as the van filled with the stink of my steaming chunder. There was a rising chorus of “Eww”s, and the driver gave me an angry glance in the rearview. I slowly looked up to see Erica squinting in revulsion, her mouth contorted in disgust. Then she turned around in her seat. For agonizing minutes I again sat rigid, again facing the back of Erica’s head (her hair was now pulled back over the seat), but this time red-faced and wearing a warm coat of my own puke. The heat and stuffiness of the van must’ve gotten to me, but I had barely noticed it once we’d started talking. Why was I the one who had done this with his breakfast? I thought miserably. I was talking to her! I was talking to her! “Smell that fresh Adirondack air!” I said, attempting to offset the van’s thick stench with weak sarcasm. Nobody laughed. Maybe they couldn’t, with their noses tucked into their collars like that. I wondered if it was possible to die of humiliation, and if it was, exactly how much longer I would have to wait. The driver finally pulled off at a rest stop, where the campers, myself not included, rushed out with diarrheic haste. He tossed back my bag and a roll of paper towels, and with undisguised contempt told me to clean up and get changed. Then I was alone, and I stared down at my caking mess with glazed self-loathing. Unless the driver dragged me out and hosed me down naked in front of the others, it couldn’t possibly get any worse than this. I looked out at everyone gathered around a couple of picnic tables, a few of them sneaking looks at the smelly leper in the back of the van. I couldn’t see Erica. I squirmed out of my ruined clothes and left them where they lay. That was my favorite shirt, I thought. I put on a fresh outfit, furiously scrubbed the seat and floor, gathered the paper towels and clothes into a toxic ball, and shakily made my way out to the trash. Needless to say, I had said my last words of the day to Erica Ciporski. She stayed in the correct sitting position for the rest of the ride, and was careful not to look my way when we finally met our parents in Paramus. I found my mom, and her genuine excitement to see me made my self-esteem rise a few percentage points. I even smiled a little. We made our way to the car, and, among other questions, she asked me how the ride had been. “Um… not bad,” I said. Without thinking, I used a technique that I had learned in the past few weeks, when I had come to be known as Mr. Second Base. “Actually, I think I might’ve made a girlfriend.”
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