Fun Camp (7 page)

BEAN PEOPLE

Today we make bean people. We’ll each glue six to ten beans to a sheet of construction paper—light-colored is best, blue or gray or yellow, so the beans look like they’re three-dimensional, which they are. Then we’re going to paint faces on the beans, different expressions but especially smiling, and draw legs and arms on the paper around the beans. Hands and feet too if you like. Shirts and ties and jobs and bills, fill out the lives of your bean people with the richness of your imaginations. You can make them into fish, cats, dogs, birds, bugs, whatever. You can make them skate, ski, crawl, fly, any G-rated thing at all, just by drawing what their limbs are doing. But before we begin, let’s pass the big sack of beans around, careful not to spill, and each take a turn reaching a hand in deep. Aren’t the beans cool and smooth? They almost feel wet, don’t they? This is one of those shortcuts to pleasure, kids, sticking your hand deep in some beans. We don’t ask why it’s so good, we just be thankful.

COMPLAINT

Getting stuck nodding while Chef Grogg holds forth makes my mouth feel all, what, like full of rocks and slobbering. Could he not talk to us as a rule?

ROY

I’ve got no peroxide for that hurt. If he doesn’t love you back, girlfriend: a story.

Roy, a baby, was named for a real man, cowboy Rogers. But all Roy did was bathe horses in a swimming pool. He stared out on the delta and beyond, to his sad soul.

A director one day passed him. “You have become a man now!” the director whispered in surprise.

“But I have no money,” Roy said.

That day, in an agent’s office: “I have your man.”

“Nobody wants a cowboy star,” the agent mentioned.

Roy got on the horse. “Something in mind?” He had the look all right.

At his film, a non-white man gave him his first crack of cocaine and Roy was never the same. In his mind, he bathed horses of the rainbow. His Mom forgave him for forgetting her address, watching his reruns and happily singing his song out and proud. Roy’s dad said sorry for leaving.

Roy got dry. Roy went to schools and told his Tale of Caution. Always, when he told them, children laughed but obeyed his commands.

SUMMER LOVIN’ TORTURE PARTY

When the gaslight blinks to say my inspiration tank’s low, I look to the Middle Ages. A man back then who had a beef with his neighbor didn’t hire a suit, he simply challenged the neighbor to a battle to the death. Since God wouldn’t let an innocent man down, whoever remained standing was righteous. The other favored mode until Trial by Jury yawned its way into common practice in the 13
^th
century was the Ordeal, in which the accused would have to walk through fire, carry a hot iron, or run the gauntlet. And if you passed, you were innocent—opposite logic of the Puritan “If she burns, she’s a witch” model. Pretty sensible, if grisly. For me, nothing puts my life on a path like a good coin flip or a straw draw. Give the divine room to do its mysterious thing. I feel for the courts, making their judgments, but their errors are well-documented. When an innocent man finds himself strapped to a chair he’ll never stand up from, it’s the outcome of a fallen world without the courage to leave a thing like justice up to chance.

*

Dear Mom,

What have you done?

Billy

LOGISTICALLY, A REAL MOMENTUM-WRECKER

One night at skits back when I was a camper, one of the tight-jeaned older heartthrob guys from Cabin 1 got up and said, “Here’s a song I like,” and they’d rigged up the PA to play a seven-minute David Bazan song, the first I’d heard by him. I later acquired the guy’s whole catalogue, listened my way through Bazan’s ascent / descent from sleepy Christian sweetie pie to conflicted Christian questioner to pissed-off agnostic antagonizer. All his best music is from that middle period when he was in the thick of it. The track in question, “Secret of the Easy Yoke,” is a gorgeous downer about wanting to know God while ever put off by His parishioners. “I still have never seen you,” Bazan sings in the chorus, “and some days I don’t love you at all.” After the bridge, there’s an instrumental verse that functions as an outro. When the song finished playing that night at skits, the heartthrob got back up and told of the time he saw Bazan play the song live. Bazan allegedly played it just as he had on the album until the third (no longer instrumental) verse, in which he sang, “In a moment, I’m alive again.” So after the show, heartthrob asked Bazan why he didn’t sing the line on the album version. Bazan said, “Because that’s the verse where I reconcile with God. But you have to figure that part out for yourself.” And I thought,
This guy talked to a musician after a concert? Badass.
And then Brent bought all the albums and then I bought all the albums. And on YouTube there’s a more recent video of Bazan playing the song live and he just ends it at the bridge.

QUESTION

When a devout man swears with the explicit intent of remaining relevant to the culture at large, isn’t he just not-swearing in disguise?

WARM FUZZY

Boy w/ Frosty Tips in Line at Dinner – w4m – 13:
You, a lake pirate from the wrong side of the tracks. Me, an unconventionally pretty self-starter often beside a huskier “wingwoman” type. You asked if I knew whether we could start with two cornbreads. I didn’t know and said so. You said not to worry about it, practically feeling me up with eye contact. You had a sweatshirt tucked into a pair of black shorts so baggy they could fit two people—an invitation? Later I found out we have to start with one cornbread and wait for everybody to go through the line before going back for more. Write me back what color hoodie I was wearing. Or if you already know who this is, come find me at quiet time tomorrow. Bring chapstick.

ALL THESE HURTS

Dried burnt macaroni cheese on a pot that big means it’s time to break out the steel wool, Puddy. Keep swishing it like that in circles. Now pour that orangey water out and see how you’re doing. Long way to go. I worry over sanitation exactly as much as I worry over the Large Hedron Collider whose future self stopped it from making a Big Bang, and over a God who kicked idolatry down the list of don’ts to make room for Higgs’ particles, and over the seasonal question, “Is my love life just an experiment testing the potential correlation between hairnets and invisibility? On how low a girl’s got to wear her top to get a little attention in this getup?” All these hurts on all these timelines add up to a
Twilight Zone
where everybody knows the forthcoming twist and discusses it openly but will gasp with true feeling when it comes. I believe this, and when I really think about it, I cover my neck with my hands. But then the other ninety percent of the time, I revert to the adage that goes, “Has anyone known true loss but those who’ve opened an avocado to find it’s a couple days past ripe?” I wish I was rich enough to look on the back of meats for traces of chronic discomfort. I wish I’d live long enough to see how far past our own globe we can get. I wish I got to laugh at the sun with mean, real confidence for not noticing how long we’ve been growing apart, for not having enough mass to explode as a supernova. How much? How much do I worry about
what
? Oh. Infrequently but desperately. What if a kid got struck down from mystery microbes in our chili-mac, Puddy? You’d kill yourself. We all would.

MORALS OF THIS EVENING’S SKITS, AS FAR AS DAVE CAN MAKE OUT, FROM LEAST TROUBLING TO MOST

All school shootings would have been prevented had the shooters gone to Fun Camp.

Refusing to participate in pranks means you’re majorly asking to get pranked.

A beer sip and you’re blitzed.

Everyone deserves everything that happens.

Chef Grogg is incomprehensible and a little creepy yet may possess a heart of gold.

Grogg’s chicken potpies cause widespread diarrhea.

Girls Cabin 2 will make out with anybody.

That submarine skit can sustain 20 years of viewing.

A compilation of Tad Gunnick quotes read aloud from a ripped spiral sheet both qualifies as a skit and warrants a standing O.

Dave and Holly tolerate being mocked.

FLIGHT OF THE BORING

Illegal elopement from the campsite constitutes the unfun child’s most drastic method of resisting our intensive treatment structure. Often times, the flight constitutes a last-ditch attempt at hanging on to what our little renegade deems his best self. As if he’s in an objective position to appraise his own personality! Four out of five times you’ll find him hiding out in that old bunker the kids think we don’t know about. You yell at him, freak him out, tell him about the Malhara that stalks these woods, or the Jackal looking to make a ritual sacrifice, or the peeved natives looking to re-gift disease blankets to the chilled ancestors of crafty pioneers—just wing it, really, get him crying. Drive slow on the way home so he calms down, then switch to Good Cop. Here’s where the camper will complain that the leaders of Fun Camp “just don’t get my sense of humor,” or he’ll fumble around with the idea that fun is neither an absolute nor a choice. The child’s views should be applauded for their well-intendedness, then refuted. A counselor’s greatest joy is when, in a Come to Fun Camp moment such as this, the boring child expresses true contrition, and repeats with you the three tenets of surrender: I suck but I know it. I’m bland but I’m working on it. I am hated by those who will someday revere me, for as their self-awareness slackens, my power grows.

SATURDAY

LADS OF THEIR NUMBER

Who here can tell me how many bears came out of the woods and mauled the forty-two youths who called Elisha a baldhead? Who can tell me what God did to Uzzah when he steadied an ark he had no business steadying? Here’s a hint: The answer isn’t, “Normally, I could look it up.” Who can tell me what slithery creatures venomed the Israelites to death when they got to whining about their rustic living conditions? Anybody? This is bad news, children. I should’ve known the anti-memorization generation isn’t gonna make an exception for sanctified texts. You got the Word called up on your Ken-Doll right beside
Vampire Angst Academy
, ready to go, like your pocket is your brain. It’s not your fault, you poor damaged darlings, you one nation underdogs, you bushel-covered lights of mine. Your bankrupt public schools won’t even let you heed commandments in nice round numbers, rail on Darwin in a written-portion-of-the-Chem-test pinch, pray through first period in sleepy reverence, or perform any of the tricks that allowed me to clock in at school without absorbing their slop. If you haven’t heard it from anyone, you’re hearing it from me: You are what you memorize. Should we stand? Should we sing? You’d like that, but no. Instead, repeat after me: Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the youths. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the youths. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the youths. Stop laughing.

LISTEN TO ME

Because you are children and I am a man, and thus I’ve had more opportunities to notice patterns than you have.

Because even as I stuff myself stupid at lunch, a controlling interest in me understands I’ll be starving by dinner.

Because everything that makes
me
irrational has been tidily wrapped up in sex.

Because a lady I knew would’ve signed on to pair up with me for the long haul if I’d asked her.

Because my biggest gripes are with soft men I’ll never meet.

Because I own my own house.

Because I’ve cajoled barroom stories from mirthy Jacks who’ll up and leave a bar at the sound of the German language.

Because I could tell you about Kansas and Kant, Ken Starr and cover letters.

Because I know tricks for keeping myself from crying.

Because I’d kick each of your asses at
The Price is Right
.

Because I memorized the verbal fallacies and blow this whistle whenever I hear one.

Because I’ve raised brows by wit alone.

Because I can tell you why certain movies are good with words you’d use wrong.

Because I registered your sense of wonder and factored it into the way I regard you.

Because I could trick even the savviest among you, and have already. And will.

Because the sting of failure has humbled me without my say so.

Because I annually get worse at lying to myself and better at avoiding bare truths.

Because the worry my birthday causes me points to a big fact I’m beginning to allow myself to acknowledge.

Because I’d do alright in the wild for a time.

Because I could kill each of you with both arms bound.

Because I know just when to kill a joke.

I KNOW WE’RE TRAMPLING HISTORY BUT

If you think back far enough, what
wasn’t
built on an Indian burial ground? Was I the ghost of a native, I bet I’d be pretty understanding about where my conquerors build their resorts. The sacred’s got a clock like anything. Me, I’d like my grave marked and mowed for a solid century, long enough for everyone who could’ve ever loved me to join me. After that, they’re free to erect a fresh Dillard’s on my once-marked bones. I owe a shot at discounts to the not yet dead.