by Mamrie Hart
The crew en route was the dream team. First, there was John from the kitchen staff. John was the best. He was always there when I needed him—to unlock the kitchen late at night so I could raid the cheese, or to drunkenly make out with me despite the fact that I just ate a lot of sharp cheddar. Of course, my home girl Hayley was in tow, but her crush, Brian, was joining us. Brian was and still is a Hagrid of a man, with a huge beard and giant body. He and Hayley were both on the mountaineering staff. This meant they were responsible for taking packs of girls on three- or five-day hikes. They could turn a scrunchie and a stick into a tourniquet or calmly scare off a mountain lion. Meanwhile, I taught dance in the one air-conditioned room at camp and was terrified of squirrels.
As soon as Hayley saw Brian on the first day that summer, she said, “Mamrie. That man is gonna be my husband.” And she had been laying the tracks all summer. The flirtation was real. But this was the first time they would be off camp property together since admitting they were into each other. It had to be special.
PRO TIP: Before you make a move on your camp crush, you have to see him off camp property to make sure your radar isn’t skewed. Sometimes when you are away from society, your standards can drop without you realizing it. He might look like Channing Tatum when he’s in a kayak but end up looking like Stockard Channing when he’s in a Burger King. I knew if Hayley needed a special night, I was the person for the job.
I would make them fall in love. I was scheming just like the twins from The Parent Trap, except with a lot more “Let’s Get It On” and a lot less “Let’s Get Together.”*
The bell rang, which ended the last activity of the day, and we were free! Thirty hours of freedom! We had the whole night ahead of us and didn’t have to be back till midnight the next night, hours after the final campfire had been extinguished and all the campers were fast asleep.
There was no time to waste. We barreled down the mountain and immediately checked in to the first shitty motel we saw. Knowing that part of Western North Carolina, I’m gonna guess it was named the Mosquito Manor. By the looks of our room, one could assume there had been at least five murders in it. But that wasn’t gonna ruin our time! A couple Natty Lights in the belly and I revealed our plans for the evening.
“They’ve got local wrestling at the armory tonight! All we have to do is bring a can of food for their food drive, and five bucks. Local wrestling, you guys! Come on!”
I looked at my crew, their mouths open, just mouth-breathing at me with shocked eyes.
“Mamie, are you serious?” Hayley asked, then chugged the rest of her beer.
“Yeah, I thought . . .”
“FUCK YES! LET’S DO THIS!” she yelled and crushed the beer can with her hand. Everyone was stoked.
Before heading to the armory, we stopped by the podunk grocery store to pick up our canned goods. A can of food and five bucks for a night of entertainment? I knew I had to make my contribution count. It would seem wrong to go up in there with a can of pinto beans or collards—disrespectful, even. Obviously I splurged for a can of artichoke hearts. Classy as fuck!
We paid for our cans, as well as some Funyuns because we had been enjoying all the greenery of the mountains that day, and headed to the match. If you haven’t eaten Funyuns before, take caution. Those savory rings give new meaning to the phrase “snack attack.” ’Cause they literally attack the shit out of your mouth. Half a bag in and your mouth feels like a miniature street fight happened in it, with bite-size tough guys stabbing your cheeks with tiny switchblades. It’s like if you went to eat a cone of fluffy pink cotton candy, then halfway through realized it was Pink Panther insulation.
We got to the armory and it was packed—almost a little too packed for a summer day without air-conditioning. The crowd was filled with good ol’ boys and sassy grandmas, teenage boys in Dale Earnhardt shirts and girls in camouflage tank tops. I guarantee 85 percent of the people in that room were cousins. And there we were, standing in the doorway, frozen. In any other scenario, we would’ve looked like drunk rednecks, but here? We may as well have been Arcade Fire rolling into that white cinder block room with the amount of stares we got. It wasn’t just a record-scratch moment. It was like an entire record store got thrown into an industrial shredder.
We nodded to the locals and quickly found four empty metal folding chairs. The spectacle that I saw in that armory was beyond words. But if I had to use words, I’d say it was a white trash shit show. I loved it. Wrestlers had names like Possum Jones, the Wrath of Tater, and the Sylva Sultan, a.k.a. Earl. The referee had to be at least ninety years old.
It was exactly what I’d hoped it would be! I looked to my right and saw Hayley and Brian not so much holding hands as gripping each other’s hands like one of them was about to fall off a cliff. John came back from the snack bar with the massive pickle I’d asked him to get me, and that’s when it started. The oh-too-familiar feeling of a panic attack started to creep in. Anxiety with a bunch of weed on top of it while in a roomful of screaming strangers is a doozy, but I tried to brush it off.
This round was between a dude in hunting gear and an old man in a black Speedo who must’ve been at least sixty-five. I chomped down on that cold pickle and tried to focus on the fun of it. Three bites into the dill and I made eye contact with a teenager across the room. His head was shaved and he looked at me like he had never seen a woman before. I went in for another bite and realized just how phallic that giant pickle was, and stopped myself. It was all too weird. If I’d heard a banjo, I would’ve passed out.
I slowly put down my pickle like it was a loaded weapon and I was surrounded by cops, eventually breaking eye contact with Captain Creeptastic. I refocused my gaze on the match just as the sixty-five-year-old wrestler pulled a huge chain out of his Speedo to lay down the law. Shit was getting TOO REAL. My paranoid ass had to get the hell out of there. My friends looked entranced by the match, but I pulled them out of it. “Hey, guys. I’m sorry but I gotta get the fuck out of here. Is that okay?” None of them spoke, but they all nodded at me in unison like a row of bobbleheads on a car dashboard.
Back in the car we snapped out of our haze and started using words again. Words like traumatized and scarred for life. Brian was the first to chime in. “I’m not saying that I didn’t enjoy watching people get hit with metal church chairs; I’m just saying we were too high for that.” We cruised my Honda down the back roads with the windows down, grateful for our lives. The summer air was hitting our faces, we could see fireflies lighting up in the fields, and the sweet sounds of Justin Timberlake’s greatest album, Justified blared from the CD player. I was so happy to be out of that armory.
When we got back to the motel, the anxiety was totally gone and we were back to our normal, loud selves. We pounded beers, reenacted the wrestling matches, and savored a much-needed night away from homesick kids. John and I chilled outside to give Brian and Hayley more privacy. Normally this is where I would pass the time with a random make-out session, but the Funyun battle scars were still too fresh. After a few beers, I went inside to grab some more from our room, fingers crossed that Hayley and Brian were hitting it off.
Oh, they weren’t just hitting it off! They were getting it off. I walked in to see Hayley, butt-ass naked, straddling Brian. She looked directly at me and said, “Ride ’em, cowboy!” with her arm miming a lasso. I burst out laughing, grabbed as many beers as I could, and joined John outside. That image will be forever burned into my brain.
Now, as much as I loved having nights off from camp, I equally hated the mornings after. My temples were pounding to their own techno beat, and my breath smelled like a mummy had farted in my mouth. After walking in on the flesh rodeo the night before, I’d gotten straight-up plastered. Luckily, we didn’t have to be back at camp till ten p.m. Unluckily, we did have to check out of the roach motel.
We walked into the daylight and it hurt. I felt like a miner who had been trapped
underground for months and was finally free. The sun burned my eyes, and my brain was half-melted. First stop was to get a big plate of hangover helper:* Waffle House! If you’ve never been to a Waffle House, you are seriously missing out. They might have “waffle” in their name but they are the Michelangelo of hash browns. They have all these different slang terms to order them. Like:
Scattered: extra crispy
Smothered: with sautéed onions
Covered: melted cheese on top
Lovered: a lil’ cigarette ash from the sexiest chef
Glovered: chef takes off glove and uses bare hands for extra flavor (not recommended)
In high school, we would go to our local Waffle House after football games or the morning after parties. I went there so often that I got chummy with the waitresses. In fact, Shirley (my main Waffle Ho) came to my senior school play and I wore a ’50s style paper Waffle House hat during curtain call in her honor. Because that’s who I was in high school.
Looking around, I could tell everyone was feeling as shitty as I was. This was based on the half a hog’s worth of bacon the rest of the table ordered. Post–carb fest, my head was still screaming. It was only one o’clock, so we had NINE long hours to burn. We needed a place to go with A/C, so we popped into a movie theater to see the first of the Batman reboots, Batman Begins; I remember it as clear as eyes right after Visine. I lasted five minutes before passing the fuck out in the theater, waking up only once to see that my friends were also dead to the world. Brian was snoring so loud that we would’ve been kicked out if we weren’t the only people there. There we were, mouth-breathing and reeking of cheap beer and vodka, paying to sleep in the cushioned seats. A fifteen-year-old usher had to wake us up after the credits ended.
Even that two-hour nap didn’t help take the edge off my hangover, and that’s when I knew what I had to do: start drinking again.
Like every other tiny-ass town in the South, there were plenty of crappy Mexican restaurants to choose from. Not fancy Mexican like I eat in L.A. When I eat Mexican food in L.A., it’s like a kale salad with pepitas and soy beef tacos with fresh pico de gallo. In NC, it’s a five-dollar plate of cheese enchiladas with refried beans and a bowl of melted white cheese dip. Essentially you just walk in and ask for a plate of brown with a little iceberg lettuce, and it’s fucking delish. So I sidled up to my plate of brown and decided to bite the bullet and get a drink. There was none of this easing-into-it shit either. I’m not one of those people who go down the steps in the pool. I’m a firm believer that you gotta cannonball right in.
“I’ll have a margarita the size of my face, please. Gracias.”
Four drinks deep and I felt like I hadn’t stopped drinking from the night before. I was back, baby! But my hand-eye coordination definitely wasn’t. I was still so shaky that every time I picked up my drink, it was like the Jell-O scene in Jurassic Park. The front of my shirt was tie-dyed with hot sauce and marg. But the real shaking kicked in when I looked down at my phone.
As my black Motorola flip phone played its Ciara “One, Two Step” ringtone, I saw that the caller ID read “Camp Office.” I froze. I felt like someone had punched me in the stomach, but it was probably the eight pounds of queso I’d just housed. I let it go to voice mail and then listened to the voice of the sweetest, most upbeat and wonderful camp director to ever live.
“Mamrie! Give me a call back. I meant to ask you before you left on your day off, but forgot. We would love for you to come back to camp early, if you can make closing campfire. Senior staff got to talking and we would love for you to be this year’s Lady of the Lake.”
Holy shitballz. Lady of the Lake was that beautiful picture that had gotten me hooked on camp three years prior at the camp fair. They wanted me to be that girl with the torch in the middle of the lake. I was honored. In the world of camp, this was a big deal. This meant that I had been chosen as a representation of all that camp stood for—that I had made this summer memorable for the campers, and thus it was my moment to extinguish the flame, to say good-bye to the summer. I realize this probably sounds like some culty-ass shit, but it was a big deal! And I was beyond touched that they had asked. I knew I had to go, despite being simultaneously drunk and hungover.
We made our way back up to camp. The superwinding, fifteen-mile-per-hour curves didn’t help my stomach. Luckily, I didn’t spew and got there just in time to put on my camp whites. You see, one of the other traditions for camp is that we wore all white to campfires. While it looked beautiful in pictures, the logic never made sense to me. Why would you put a bunch of girls in all-white clothing to sit in the woods, surrounded by dirt? Not to mention that with that much estrogen floating around, there were a good four to six girls having their first period at any moment. It was a YM embarrassing story waiting to happen.
The campfire went off without a hitch, and I was actually keeping myself together despite one camper telling me that I smelled weird.
“It’s a new perfume,” I said back, hoping that would shut her up.
“Ah. Well, you need to throw it away. It stinks. You smell like my aunt Kathy.”
I was not gonna have this sassy little sassafras blow my cover. “Well, I guess your aunt Kathy has very good taste, because this perfume is super expensive.”
“So is caviar but it’s just eggs out of a fish’s butt.”
We stared at each other in a total face-off until I was snapped out of it by the voice of our camp director.
“Tonight we have chosen Mamrie as our Lady of the Lake. We think that Mamrie represents the spirit of camp, and the type of girls this place creates. Mamrie, please do us the honor.”
I nodded, all charm and innocence. I took the torch, lit it off the fire, then slowly walked out through the woods to meet the canoe. The rest of the camp took their floating candles and began walking out of the woods the opposite direction, all singing the camp song in unison. I carefully got in the canoe and another counselor paddled as I held the torch. As we made it around the bend and out of the woods, the campers were already walking through the clearing, holding their floating candles as they made their way to the docks.
I sat at the front of the canoe, gripping this heavy-ass torch. My hands were quivering, and the stick felt like it was a hundred pounds, but I was determined to keep it steady and lit. But the torch had other plans. Now, normally the torch would be made by the mountaineering staff, but since they were busy humping somewhere, torch-making duty had been given to someone on the theater staff.
But the thespian who’d made the torch had forgotten one crucial element: the wires. Here’s how torch-making works. You’ve got your big stick. The tip is covered in maxi pads, making it look like a giant Q-tip.* Once those are stuck on, all you’ve got to do is wrap metal wires around the pads to keep them in place, then douse that baby in lighter fluid, and you’ve got yourself a torch worthy of the Summer Olympics! Without the wires, however, the torch will fall apart because the glue from the pads will immediately heat up and not stick anymore. And this is precisely what happened.
As the canoe made its way toward the dock, the pads started falling off the stick one by one.
“Oh my god. They’re coming off!” I shrieked to the counselor paddling behind me. Another one dropped off, almost landing in the canoe before I kicked it out.
“Hold it over the water!” she yelled whispered. “It’ll be fine.”
We paddled on with a trail of flaming pads in our wake. They’d look beautiful for a second, ablaze on the water, then quickly burn out, a trail of crispy black maxi pads nestled among the lily pads. By the time we reached the middle of the lake, with the whole camp watching from the dock, I was left with nothing but a smoking branch. The campers stood in horror as they finished the last round of the camp song. Fellow counselors stood with hands over their wide-open mouths, trying not to laugh. I continued proudly holding this “torch” in front of the canoe, ju
st like in the picture.
The sky was fiery pink. Floating candles surrounded us, and the only noise you could hear was from the crickets and the bullfrogs. I took a moment to lock the image in my memory, then extinguished the bare stick in the lake. There was no sizzle sound, just the unsatisfying feeling of a big stick being dipped in a lake. It was like leaning in to blow out your birthday candles and someone does it right before you.* I looked up to see a dock of people shaking their heads as I gave an “oops” shrug. We paddled in as the entire camp slow-clapped at my pathetic display.
Lady of the Lake had been a tradition for eighty-five years. Almost nine decades of women carrying the torch, and I’d fucked it up. Well, maybe not fucked it up, but I definitely put my own spin on it. The image might not have gone in the next summer’s pamphlet, but I guarantee it was one of the more memorable ones since 1919. What can I say? I guess I’m bad luck for traditions.
But there is something that I am good luck for! Brian and Hayley have been happily married eight years, and now they have a daughter. What I’m saying is if you want your relationship to last, make sure that I see you have sex for the first time. Maybe even scream, “Ride ’em, cowboy!” at me to be extra safe.
Bizarrgarita
2 oz vanilla-infused tequila
1 oz orange liqueur
3 oz orange juice
1 tbsp unsweetened pumpkin puree
For the rim, make a mix of equal parts cinnamon and sugar. If you can find vanilla sugar, amazeballs. If not, throw a vanilla bean into a bag of this stuff for a few hours.
To infuse the tequila, take a regular-size bottle of tequila (trust me, you’ll want the whole thing infused; this shit is tasty). Take 2 fresh vanilla beans and slice them lengthwise down the middle. Throw them into the bottle and let them infuse for 3 to 5 days, giving it a little shake each day. When it’s to your liking, fish out them vanilla beans or a week later you’re going to be drinking Bath & Body Works Vanilla Tequila Body Spray.
