“LESLIE!” I yelled as I flung open the doors to the nurse’s office.
“Mark, what’s the matter?” she said as I ran to her.
“My canoe tipped over. That asshole Glenn did it. I think I have a concussion and will most certainly need to go home.”
“Let me take a look at you,” Leslie said as she inspected my head. I glanced over at the TV to possibly catch the last ten minutes of General Hospital, but much to my displeasure, Oprah had already started. “You look okay to me.”
“DAMN IT!” I yelled. “I hate this fucking place! Why am I here and not at home baking cupcakes and watching old movies? This summer is going to blow.”
“Maybe you need to change your attitude a little bit,” Leslie said.
“Change my attitude? Maybe these people need to go fuck themselves. And that Carl is the worst of them all.”
“You’re telling me,” Leslie said. I wondered what beef she had with the camp owner, whom everyone else seemed to love.
“Whatever do you mean?” I innocently asked Leslie.
“Well, he just will not seem to ever leave that skanky wife of his.”
“Why would you want him to do that?” Could I possibly add extortion to my list of crimes? If Leslie spilled some serious dirt about Carl, I could blackmail his ass into letting me leave camp early. Erica Kane would have been so proud. This is why I watched soap operas in lieu of cartoons as a child—life lessons learned.
“Well,” Leslie said, as if she were letting me in on some deep dark secret, “do you remember on One Life to Live when Viki decided that she didn’t want to be with Clint anymore, so she could begin seeing Sloane?”
“Listen, lady, I have been around the block a time or two myself,” I told her. “You’re having an affair with Carl, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” she replied, “but please keep it between the two of us.”
“Of course,” I said with a grin as big as a Cheshire cat’s. “One question.”
“Yes.”
“You are so much cuter than he is, so why do you even care?”
“Because, Mark,” she replied. I began wondering why anyone over the age of eighteen even bothered telling me anything. I was such a troublemaker. She continued, “When you meet the one, you just know.”
“What about his wife?” I asked.
“That whore,” she laughed. “No competition for me whatsoever.” I believed her. She was pretty smoking and about thirty years younger than what I imagined Carl’s wife to be.
“Good luck with that,” I said as I walked out of the nurse’s office stealing a few Band-Aids on my way out.
As I walked back to my cabin, I decided to concoct a diabolic plan to escape from camp by ruining several lives, while I came out of the entire situation relatively unscathed. I would be here for another two or three days, tops, and then off I would go, back to D.C. However, when I returned to my cabin, things went from bad to worse. I flung the screen door open and noticed that there were a few new guests at the camp. I figured that Jeremy and I were not going to be alone in our spacious cabin all summer, but did not think that we would be rooming with the Model UN.
“¡Hola!” kid number one said.
“Uh, hey,” I said.
“Mark, come meet our new roommates,” Jeremy said as he gestured the four new recruits to Camp Hell toward me. “This is Anthony,” he said as I shook Anthony’s hand. “And this is Anthony,” Jeremy said as he gestured toward the other Italian-looking kid.
“So wait, you’re both named Anthony?” I asked.
“Fuck you,” Anthony 1 said.
“Fuck you,” Anthony 2 said.
They both looked at me like I had just sharted in front of them.
“They don’t speak English. They’re Italian, and only seem to know English curse words for some reason,” Jeremy explained.
“VA FANGOOL!” I yelled. The Italians looked at me as if I had just killed their parents. “Well, seems as though you can dish it out, but you can’t take it.”
Jeremy gestured to two more foreign kids.
“This is Giovanni,” Jeremy said as I shook Giovanni’s hand. “And this is Juan,” he said as I shook Juan’s hand.
“Do any of them speak any English?” I asked.
“I don’t think so,” Jeremy replied.
“What the hell are they doing here?” Anthony squared and Giovanni seemed to be from Italy, but I wasn’t really sure where Juan was from. Somewhere in Poor, I imagined.
“Apparently, it’s cheaper for them to go to camp in America or something. I think it’s nice. Maybe we can learn about another culture while we are here.”
“Are you like a real person, Jeremy?” I asked. “You are way too happy. You must be hiding some sort of deep dark secret or something. I have never met anyone as happy as you are.”
“I don’t know. I just like people I guess,” he replied.
“Well, that makes one of us,” I said. Suddenly things went from worst to agonizingly torturous when Glenn waltzed into our bunk.
“HEY CAMPERS,” Glenn yelled.
“GLENN!” all of the foreigners yelled. They couldn’t say hello in English, but they apparently knew exactly who Glenn was. Curious. “So listen, guys, Jack was supposed to be the counselor for this bunk, but he was arrested for sleeping with underage girls or something, so looks like you’re stuck with me.”
“JESUS CHRIST!” I yelled. Everyone looked at me.
“Something the matter, little man?” Glenn asked.
“I have to see Carl,” I said as I breezed out the door. I made a beeline for the head cottage to take down Carl, ruin his marriage, and get the hell out of Dodge as quickly as possible.
I sashayed across camp as fast as my cookie-loving ass could go. I hustled through the woods, and on the other end I saw a light that guided me toward Carl’s cottage. I could tell that he was home and walked up the stairs to his cottage and knocked on the door.
“Oh, hello, young man,” Carl said as he opened the door.
“I’m coming in,” I said. I barged in and took a seat on one of the big sofas he had. Compared to the shit shacks the rest of us were staying in, Carl’s cottage looked like the Taj Mahal.
“Can I help you with something?” Carl asked.
“Shut the door,” I said. If there was one thing I had learned from Erica Kane, it was to make sure that no one else was around while you were hatching an extortion plot. If someone happens to overhear, then they can blackmail you and the cycle continues.
“Is something wrong?” Carl asked as he shut the door and came to sit on the sofa adjacent to me.
“I was just speaking to Leslie,” I said as cool as a cucumber, “and found out something relatively shocking.” I glanced at the picture of his wife and children on the table by his sofa. What a loving family they had. Certainly he would not want to give that up for a summer fling with the camp nurse.
“Oh, and what was that?” he questioned.
“She told me that you two had a little something going on.”
“ARE YOU SERIOUS, YOUNG MAN?” he yelled.
“Yes.”
“GET OUT!” he screamed.
“Why? I am here to make a little bargain with you.” My first-ever extortion plot was going off better than I could ever have hoped. I had him right where I wanted him.
“I am not making any sort of deal with a twelve-year-old,” he said.
“I think you will want to, once you know what my offer is,” I replied.
“Offer? WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?” Carl yelled. “Were you raised by wolves?”
“No, I was raised by Susan Lucci and Heather Locklear. If you have a problem with that, you can take it up with them!”
“What do you want?” he asked.
“Okay. I promise not to tell your wife about your tryst with the nurse if you let me go home.”
“No deal.”
“What? You didn’t even think about it.”
“I did. But
, what you didn’t think about was how you were going to get in touch with my wife. She runs the girls camp, across the lake in Vermont. The only way to get there is by boat, and judging from your little nautical adventure earlier today, I don’t think you will be up for making that trip.”
Son of a bitch.
“I can write her.”
“You don’t know the address.”
“I will find it.”
“Listen, you little asshole,” he said as he grabbed me by the collar, “you will tell no one about this. Do you hear me?”
“Excuse me,” I said as I backed away from him. “Are you manhandling me right now?”
“OF COURSE I AM!” he yelled. “You’re trying to blackmail me!”
“I want out, Carl. And I want out now,” I said.
“Well, sorry buddy boy. I am going to do everything in my power to make sure that you stay here for the duration of the summer and I will make your life a living hell.”
“Are you threatening me?” I asked.
“No, that’s a promise.”
“Fine. I will write my mother and tell her what’s going on. She’ll come and get me.”
“Assuming she gets your letters.”
“Tampering with other people’s mail is a federal offense,” I replied. It is. I saw Erica try to steal Brooke’s mail earlier that year on All My Children, so it must have been true.
“GET OUT!” he yelled. “I don’t want to see you for the rest of the summer!”
I stormed out of the cottage and it began to rain. Instead of getting out of camp, I had unleashed a hell that was going to terrorize me for the rest of the summer. My only ally, Leslie, was sure to never speak to me again, as I had outed her secret. To top it all off, I was rooming with four of the five original members of Menudo. I ran back to my bunk, picked up my pen and Winnie-the-Pooh stationery, and began writing my epitaph. Earlier that day I’d realized that my idiotic father and stepmother had given me the wrong address for people to send me mail. First they sent me to this awful place, and now they apparently did not want me to have any contact with the outside world. The following is a real letter that I wrote to my mother. Nothing has been altered from its original format; this is really how crazy (and kind of racist) I was at the age of twelve.
“HELP!” I wrote in big bubble letters on the first page of the letter.
“Mommy—look at this face.” I then drew a sad face with a really bad haircut and an arrow pointing to my hair. “My stupid bushy hair which the dumb Hair Cuttery woman gave me.”
Not only do I hate camp, I have like 3 or 4 Eye-talians sleeping in my bunk and they curse each other all the time. And besides that, they smell [I wrote the word smell with stink lines coming out of it. I was so creative.] They don’t have a pool, they have a crib. It’s a closed-out part of the lake, which you have to swim in. And as if that’s not enough, stupid Dad gave me the wrong address so I’ll never get mail. Help! Please! Call me at camp. I want to hear from you. I have 6,000 mosquito bites and I have only been here for three days and I have like 7,000 mosquito bites [apparently the number went up as I was writing the letter]. We don’t have a bathroom in our bunk. We have to walk to the bathroom. Last night when I had to piss, I tripped over a branch on my way to the bathroom and felt like an old man. I should have screamed, “Help. I have fallen and I can’t get up.” There aren’t any personal showers so we have to take showers together. (If I come back home smelling bad, you’ll know why.) Going to meals is hell too. Dad stayed here for twenty minutes then left—and expected me to hug him. So did Stacey. I hope they both ROT IN HELL. Oh well, but get me out of here. Today the nurse was helping me plot my escape, but now I don’t think it’s going to work [I couldn’t possibly tell my mother that I had tried in vain to blackmail the camp owner]. It would have never worked anyway. Oh well. I love you. Write back. Come and Get Me. Call. Either one—you choose. I love you, Mark.
I was such a scamp. I waited for a night messenger from the U.S. Postal Service to arrive on horseback to take my mail, but when he didn’t show, I dropped the letter into the mailbox, in hopes no one would steal it. I went to bed that night and had the most amazing dream that Lorenzo Lamas had spirited me out of camp and back home. When I woke up the next morning to Jeremy’s face smiling and telling me to wake up, I knew it couldn’t have been true.
“Wake up!” Jeremy said.
“No! Go to hell,” I said.
“That’s no way to talk to your best camp buddy. Come on, let’s shower.”
“No. I am not showering with you.”
“You’ll start to stink,” Jeremy said.
“Well, the Italians don’t seem to mind, so what do I care? They really aren’t frequenting the showers from what I gather either.”
“Come on, Mark, you need to take a shower,” Jeremy said.
“Like hell I do,” I said as I got up, put on my shoes, and walked out the door. As I was walking down to the cafeteria, I glanced by the nurse’s office and saw Leslie, who was probably watching The Price Is Right, looking extremely melancholy. I hoped that I hadn’t gotten her in trouble with that asshole Carl, but then realized she would probably be better off without him. If need be, I would make it a point to pop by later in the day and tell her that she could do better than him and offer a shoulder for her to cry on. For the time being, I needed to get my ass down to the cafeteria and eat something. I was so hungry. Three days of healthy food was taking its toll on me and I was beginning to become weak and possibly anemic. Perhaps it had something to do with the lack of preservatives in my diet or the fact that the cookie food group was now completely lacking from my routine. Either way, I was starving and needed something to eat, and quick.
As I was hiking down the hill, my least favorite person at camp stopped me: Glenn. I am not exactly sure why I hated him as much as I did, but the sight of him made me nauseous. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that he looked like a straight-up rapist. We were, however, stuck together for the duration of the summer and I was going to have to put up with his nonsense for the rest of the month.
“Where ya going, buddy?” Glenn said as he stopped me.
“I NEED TO EAT. NOW!” I yelled.
“No time for that,” Glenn said as he put his hands on my shoulders and physically turned me around and began pushing me back up the hill.
“Are you seriously touching me right now? God only knows where those hands have been,” I said. “Where are you taking me? I need to eat something. NOW!”
“Back up the hill,” Glenn said. “I got word from Carl this morning—you need to be with the other set of kids at camp.”
Oh, shit, they are sending me to be with the fatties, I thought.
“Other kids?” I asked, as Glenn continued to push me back up the hill. “Stop touching me, I can walk up a hill on my own,” I added. I was, however, almost completely out of breath and had only walked about ten steps.
“Yes,” Glenn said. “Carl thinks it’s time for you to be with some of the more proportionally challenged kids at camp.”
“The fat kids?” I asked.
“Ummm … kind of, yeah.”
“DAMN HIM!” I yelled.
I knew it was too good to be true. Granted, I had only been at camp for a few days, and I knew it was only a matter of time before I would be carted away to spend time with the fatter kids at camp. I was, after all, there to lose weight, and until then the only physical exercise I had gotten was being lifted from the cold lake back into a canoe.
“What’s your problem with Carl?” Glenn asked as we walked up the hill.
“I hate him. I hate you. And I hate this camp,” I replied.
“Okay, understandable,” Glenn said.
“What? Aren’t you going to tell me that I need to buck up and be a part of the team?”
“No,” Glenn replied. “If you don’t like it, you don’t like it. But remember, it’s not forever, and maybe you can learn something here.”
“Ummm
… okay,” I replied. That was the first decent thing that had come out of Glenn’s mouth in the short time I had known him. We walked up the hill and followed a path that led us behind the community showers (four days in and I still had no idea where they were), through a mess of trees and onto a large playing field. When we approached, all I saw was a bunch of fat-asses. Each was bigger than the next. I was not nearly as fat as these kids were. Was I?
“Okay, Mark,” Glenn said, “I have to go back down the hill. I am going to motorboat over to the girls’ camp and hopefully motorboat one of the counselors, ha-ha-ha.”
What an idiot. Glenn left me, and a waiflike man with glasses and a huge orange Jew-fro approached. At least one of my people was within view.
“I’m Kurt,” the redheaded Jew said.
“Mark,” I replied.
“I’ve heard a lot about you from Carl,” he said.
Apparently my extortion plot gone wrong was all over the front pages of the Hidden Crest Tribune that morning. I was wondering where my copy was and why I had not been interviewed for my side of the story.
“I’m sure,” I replied.
“Okay, Mark, we are doing some simple exercises so I can determine what work needs to be done and on whom. This will be quite grueling, but the results will be amazing and maybe you will begin to like yourself again.”
“I am pretty amazing just the way I am. Don’t you think?” I asked.
He sniffed around me, obviously wondering what intoxicating scent surrounded my body.
“It’s cologne. From Melrose Place,” I said. He looked confused, so I continued. “You know, the TV show.” He looked dumbfounded. “But you can buy it at CVS, I think. It’s not like from Melrose Place in L.A.”
“No cologne. It attracts bugs.”
“You’re telling me, I have like ten thousand mosquito bites.” Apparently I had acquired about three thousand more mosquito bites from when I wrote my mother the night before.
“So don’t wear it and you’ll be fine,” Kurt replied.
“I am trying this new thing,” I said.
“Oh, and what’s that?”
“I think the French do it.”
Eating My Feelings Page 6
