Camping Out

Saw this year's documentary on Camp Camp -- that summer camp for LGBT adults -- on Boy Culture blog. Matt posts five other "camp classics" (think "Mommie Dearest to Mama Mia" and "Meatballs") as well as detailing his own experience at Camp Lu Lay Lea, the Lutheran summer camp he attended as an 11-year-old. It sounds like he mostly had fun -- faking early-morning showers to avoid being seen naked aside -- experiencing his first "overt lust toward another boy" and being indoctrinated into Van Halen music "by gnarly straight boys," and it got me thinking about my own childhood misadventures in the woods.

   

It was the fall of 1978 that I was shipped off to Camp Cedar Lake (aka "sixth-grade camp" -- everybody went) where I, too, faked some bathing, got a bad case of "Cat Scratch Fever" courtesy of a sexy "older man" (an 18-year-old camp counselor with a guitar who was a senior at Lamphere High) and did drag in a parody of an Underalls commercial -- in pigtails! -- for the big sendoff talent show. (Seriously.) Sadly, no photos have surfaced as of yet.

 

From Chelsea, Michigan, to Chelsea, Manhattan!

A file photo of the mess hall, where the Mstrike>drag talent show went down

It wasn't exactly "Little Darlings" -- not that I wouldn't have totally won any bet to fuck that counselor I mentioned -- and it wasn't quite Camp Camp -- although in retrospect, being out in the woods with a bunch of hormonally explosive 11 and 12-year-olds is a lot more homoerotic than being at an LGBT camp for adults.

Cabin fever, before I arrived

Bunks and prepubescent hunks

But I do remember having some fun during those rare moments when they weren't forcing us to go hiking at 6 a.m. for no apparent reason. Although things were tense back at Page Middle School, it seemed like the bullies were willing to give it a bit of a rest in our fish-out-of-water environment. The best thing to come out of the experience was meeting my best friend, Mark, who immediately got my deadpan commentary while (also) hiding out under a tree avoiding a game of dodge ball. (I dropped my camp partner, Andrew, like a hot potato and Mark and I have been BFFs ever since!)

   

Notice the "tootpaste" and the fact that I barely knew which was was up!

I later chronicled my experience in my first book, "Don't Forget Your Toothbrush." The manuscript, which I (just happen to) have a copy of lying around my New York apartment, is equal parts Judy Blume's "Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing" and Erma Bombeck's "If Life Is a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing in the Pits?," through the eyes of an 11-year-old gay boy. (No wonder most of my friends were teachers -- I was a few stretch marks away from complaining that my husband immediately falls asleep after making love for 30 seconds.)

   

My life was so "chaotic," I needed to write my memoir four years younger than Drew

If my camp novel (which The Times apparently described as "funny and alive") or the newsroom my brothers and I set up in the basement of our house on 13 Mile Road weren't indication enough that I was destined for a career in words, my memoir, "From Twirp to Tennis" (written at age 12 -- and you thought Drew Barrymore was ridiculous!) -- and my disappointing follow-ups to "Don't Forget Your Toothbrush" -- the frenemy saga "Sweetcheeks" and the teen-angst potboiler "Another Summer Down the Drain" -- were solid proof that I was nothing if not prolific (as evidenced by this 10,980th blog post!), and forever a bit campy.