didn’t know what to say. Theo left school before too long, followed in short order by Chip, and I don’t know what happened to him, but thinking about him today makes me queasy because it reminds me that whatever was in Suzanne is in me too.
So if that’s how I feel about the moments that have lingered in my memory, what about the moments I’ve forgotten? Who among my former acquaintance is at this moment recalling the day in high school when I turned halfway around in my seat and inadvertently pierced every pretense he had constructed that he wasn’t an unhappy alien? In whose face did I slam the gate?
Dinner on the first night of Camp Camp was not the only meal I found stressful. Throughout the week, no matter who I sat with, inside of thirty seconds I looked up and saw other people sitting elsewhere who I thought were cooler. No matter that if I’d sat with them to begin with I would have looked up at the people I was sitting with now and thought
they
were cooler; I was incapable of choosing correctly. At lunch on Tuesday I found a seat across from two men I had met in the stained-glass studio whose names were almost certainly David and Steve. As I lifted my glass of fruit punch to my lips, I saw Kerry and James—both in Barney Frank with me—sitting a few tables over. I knew that if I abandoned David and Steve for them, they would envelop me in the radiance of their coolness and make me belong and I would be happy, but I couldn’t bring myself to hurt David’s and Steve’s feelings, so I resigned myself to being miserable but polite until I died. At another table I saw two men who were less cool than I—the haircuts alone would have been enough—and it occurred to me that I could go over and envelop them in the radiance of what little coolness I had at my disposal. But then I realized that this would take me even further away from the truly cool people, who would think even less of me than I knew they already did.
When I walked into the main lodge that night for the Karaoke Lounge, however, I brimmed with hope. I intended to scan the tables, find the coolest people I knew, and cling to them as fiercely as Kate Winslet clings to the splintered piece of flotsam in
Titanic
while Leonardo DiCaprio dies of hypothermia. I would not feel comfortable, certainly; all the same, at least I would have a moment of respite from the unceasing struggle not to drown.
But it was not to be. Every cool person was already engaged in conversation with another cool person, and I saw no way to breach the walls those conversations had erected. So I made my way to an empty bench at the side of the room. Better I should spend the evening in lonely isolation than that I should be surrounded by people with no one but myself for company.
Then the karaoke started. Vickers, the head lifeguard, sang “I Write the Songs (That Make the Whole World Sing).” She was dressed in a bright orange shirt and overall shorts; she didn’t move and her eyes never left the karaoke screen, yet she sang so proudly that I couldn’t help loving her. When she got to the key change the audience burst into applause. Then she finished and I remembered that I was alone.
I saw Ryan the cute lifeguard and stood up to go sit with him but when I got closer I saw that Kerry was sitting right behind him, arms around him and chin in the crook of his neck. I veered away, cringing at my desire to belong and wanting to strike myself, and walked back to my empty bench. I hated them both and myself most of all.
Then Bill Cole, who had founded Camp nine years earlier, came onstage in excruciating drag. On our first day in Maine, Bill had told us about the birth of Camp Camp. “I came out to my wife when I was forty-nine,” he said, “and she put me on a bus to Provincetown. The people I saw there were beautiful and handsome, and I was like, I don’t belong here. So I wanted to make a place where everybody could feel like they belonged.” That afternoon I had
So if that’s how I feel about the moments that have lingered in my memory, what about the moments I’ve forgotten? Who among my former acquaintance is at this moment recalling the day in high school when I turned halfway around in my seat and inadvertently pierced every pretense he had constructed that he wasn’t an unhappy alien? In whose face did I slam the gate?
Dinner on the first night of Camp Camp was not the only meal I found stressful. Throughout the week, no matter who I sat with, inside of thirty seconds I looked up and saw other people sitting elsewhere who I thought were cooler. No matter that if I’d sat with them to begin with I would have looked up at the people I was sitting with now and thought
they
were cooler; I was incapable of choosing correctly. At lunch on Tuesday I found a seat across from two men I had met in the stained-glass studio whose names were almost certainly David and Steve. As I lifted my glass of fruit punch to my lips, I saw Kerry and James—both in Barney Frank with me—sitting a few tables over. I knew that if I abandoned David and Steve for them, they would envelop me in the radiance of their coolness and make me belong and I would be happy, but I couldn’t bring myself to hurt David’s and Steve’s feelings, so I resigned myself to being miserable but polite until I died. At another table I saw two men who were less cool than I—the haircuts alone would have been enough—and it occurred to me that I could go over and envelop them in the radiance of what little coolness I had at my disposal. But then I realized that this would take me even further away from the truly cool people, who would think even less of me than I knew they already did.
When I walked into the main lodge that night for the Karaoke Lounge, however, I brimmed with hope. I intended to scan the tables, find the coolest people I knew, and cling to them as fiercely as Kate Winslet clings to the splintered piece of flotsam in
Titanic
while Leonardo DiCaprio dies of hypothermia. I would not feel comfortable, certainly; all the same, at least I would have a moment of respite from the unceasing struggle not to drown.
But it was not to be. Every cool person was already engaged in conversation with another cool person, and I saw no way to breach the walls those conversations had erected. So I made my way to an empty bench at the side of the room. Better I should spend the evening in lonely isolation than that I should be surrounded by people with no one but myself for company.
Then the karaoke started. Vickers, the head lifeguard, sang “I Write the Songs (That Make the Whole World Sing).” She was dressed in a bright orange shirt and overall shorts; she didn’t move and her eyes never left the karaoke screen, yet she sang so proudly that I couldn’t help loving her. When she got to the key change the audience burst into applause. Then she finished and I remembered that I was alone.
I saw Ryan the cute lifeguard and stood up to go sit with him but when I got closer I saw that Kerry was sitting right behind him, arms around him and chin in the crook of his neck. I veered away, cringing at my desire to belong and wanting to strike myself, and walked back to my empty bench. I hated them both and myself most of all.
Then Bill Cole, who had founded Camp nine years earlier, came onstage in excruciating drag. On our first day in Maine, Bill had told us about the birth of Camp Camp. “I came out to my wife when I was forty-nine,” he said, “and she put me on a bus to Provincetown. The people I saw there were beautiful and handsome, and I was like, I don’t belong here. So I wanted to make a place where everybody could feel like they belonged.” That afternoon I had
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