Pioughd

Living away from home at camp for an entire summer is a very grown-up thing to do. No parents or siblings just you and your friends (or enemies as the case may be) and your own personal habits. But there are some characteristics associated with childhood that take some time to be phased out. This might imply that the child is not yet ready to be away from home and maybe in a more subconscious way is scared and insecure. Bedwetting might be one of those characteristics. One of my bunkmates had just such a problem. He would wet the bed at night and then - instead of changing the sheets and letting everyone know what he'd done - ignored the issue and continued to sleep and pee in the same soiled sheets. Besides disgusting this was probably unsanitary and created this horrible smell in the bunk that only festered and grew more pungent in the hot summer days. Oddly enough this camper wasn't ostracized for his tendencies by the other campers and remained a cocky kid who somehow didn't let let this toddler-like tendency bother him.

One night his peeing actually woke me up. I had the unenviable position of sharing a bunk with him - my bed on the top, his on the bottom - so his night time peeing could at times be heard by those in proximity including myself. I was asleep when I heard this faint spraying sound. Disgusting - but he had the respect of the other campers and I was not yet courageous enough to confront him and call hiim out.

At one point late in the summer we were packing up our belongings getting ready to go home. He had stripped his bed save a plastic sheet that "protected" the mattress from his pee stained sheets. The naked bed didn't much impact the steady bouquet of urine that permeated the bunk (it was already pretty bad) but did make for a more arresting visual as flies had flocked to this pee-stained plastic sheet reveling in the filth. So enraptured were these flies that they seemed to be getting drunk or stoned on the urine just sitting motionless on his bed not moving or buzzing around - just drinking it in so to speak. A couple other campers noticed this scene and were sufficiently disgusted. I was enraged that we had to put up with this behaviour and frustrated that nobody had done anything about it. All I wanted was for all of his shit to be burned in a pee-stained bonfire in the softball field.

Shit For Brains

The oldest kids in camp get to lay claim as the tastemakers and leaders of all of the other campers. The younger kids looked to the oldest kids to set the tone for the summer and as influencers the oldest could greatly improve the monotony of the camp routine. A weak group of oldest campers could make a summer less interesting and was a lost opportunity to earn the respect of others. But with this awesome responsibility comes knowing that if any camp staff or even younger campers want your coveted position on top they'll have to go through you and knock you down to get it. For this reason the oldest were also vulnerable.

Camp staff, particularly the groundskeepers were often comprised of ex-campers. They were freewheelers, rogues and almost completely unaffiliated. They could go and do what they wanted within reason - with little or no social repercussions. Operating nearly completely under the radar they were stealthy and outside all of the social structure of camp. But cross them and they will rise up -and unite as one - striking quickly and forcefully to get their revenge.

The circumstances of their vengeful acts were at times mysteries to me. I personally didn't have a beef with them or knew anyone who did. I suppose I wasn't connected enough to even have an opinion one way or the other. But somone in our bunk had done something to piss off the groundkeepers and their revenge was swift and dirty with a level of symbolism perhaps even they didn't understand. Upon our return from breakfast one morning we returned to our bunk to find a large dark moist patch in the very middle of our wooden floor. Where the floor had been worn down by countless footsteps and late night drunken camp counslers now lay a formidable shitstain partially covered by toilet paper used by the ass-ailant.  I suppose that it would've been even weirder if he hadn't wiped - after all he wasn't THAT uncouth. At some level it might've been a little better if he had maybe wiped and then placed the used toilet paper in a wastepaper basket so that nothing would obscure the simple vileness of the shit. It wasn't a log or even loose but must've been a log at some point having perhaps been stepped in or spread out so as to create an even greater mess that would then have to be scrubbed and cleaned up. This act needed to present more of an inconvenience than just a sweeping the tube of shit into the wastebasket without so much as a wrinkled nose by the unlucky camper forced into duty.

As adolescent pre-teens we didn't really understand the completeness of the affront being paid to us. Once we discovered what we were looking at (it didn't smell nearly as bad as it should have, something I'm sure the perpetrator regretted) most of us screamed "Gross!" or "That is sooooo disgusting!" or the like. But to take a crap in someone else's living quarters is the ultimate slap in the face that shows that not only do you not care about being somewhere you shouldn't but that you completly do not respect the true occupiers of the living quarters and show this disrespect by taking a huge crap on their floor. Understanding the true enormitiy of this "dis" would've only escalated things perhaps even sending our summer spinning out of control. Ignorance is bliss maybe.

Blowjob

Life at summer camp was an ideal place for a pre-teen/teenage boy. With hormones raging and mischief beckoning there was no better place to be sent than the woods of Amherst, NH to be with 300-400 other Jews each looking to get away from their parents for some kind of cheap thrills. As a pre-teen, sex was a topic on everyone's mind - like constantly. When you got up (BEMHO), went to breakfast ("these muffins look like Joelle Sebanook's tits"), swimming ("I think Stephanie Clayman has one of the most under-rated asses in all of camp"), Judaica ("I like it when Sue Aronson teaches us how to do pelvic thrusts to "Ani o'heavah tachol hasman"), lunch ("If we knock these salt packets onto the floor we could get Linda Gershon to bend over and pick them up enabling us to see down her shirt") athletics ("Did you feel up Leah Dorfman when you collided with her at home plate?"), riflery ("Wow look at Rachel Leavitt - I want to get down into the prone position with her") dinner ("Look at these hot dogs - they look like cocks. Here, put one between your knees.") and then finally Israeli Dancing ("God it's so hot in here. I hope one of the girl counselors takes off their top.")

One of the oddest examples of this ever present and pervasive sex theme came one evening when we were getting ready for our Evening Activity. While in the bath house brushing my teeth at one of the three communal sinks that bordered the area just outside the showers I turned to look at Seth Caswell who was standing next to me and had just finished up the same task. After spitting out some toothpaste and wiping his mouth Seth looked back at me while I was in mid-brush, mouth covered with toothpaste foam, thought for a minute and then said "You look like you just gave someone a blowjob." That was it. You couldn't be more point blank and completely random than that. Even in the performing of the most routine, mundane activity reflecting good oral hygiene even - you couldn't escape the fact that everything you did had to be tied back to something related to sex. I looked back at Seth and in a tone that works best when used by boys under the age of 16 amongst their peers said simply "Fuck off Caswell."