laid adjacent
The hockey camp was in southern New Hampshire, though it wasn’t really a hockey camp at all. It was two cabins within the campus of a larger summer camp. Since the hockey players were isolated in every way from the regular campers, there was a Sharks Vs. Jets atmosphere between the two groups, though instead of choreographed musical knife fights it mostly played out with the occasional dinner roll tossed on the hockey camp table in the mess hall.
Which is really the only time the campers interacted with us unless they saw us out swimming on our rare time off. Mostly we slept, ate, and took the bus to the arena to learn how to play hockey better for most of the day. Occasionally at night they would load up the bus once again and take us to a movie at the local townie cinema or too see a local minor league baseball team play in their sad, cold "stadium" with an equally as sad and cold crowd.
....and I loved everything about it.
On my hockey teams at home, I never had friends. Whatever the age cutoff was for the next level up, it always placed me as the youngest on the team. It didn’t help that I was also already small and didn’t have the peachfuzz ‘stache or the pubescent war stories that were shared in the locker room.
Spending all day and night with people is different though so at camp I had all sorts of friends. The one that I was closest with was named Jack. He was from Massachusetts and definitely the most obnoxious of the younger cabin. Most likely a future fuck-up but when I met him he was just a funny 11-year-old kid with a blond bowl cut.
Jack had a lot to say about everything, and wasn’t afraid to say it. One day, a group of us huddled around his bunk while he told us about jerking off. His brother had taught him what to do and Jack decided to demonstrate for us. The irony of his name is not lost on me as I write this but at the time I couldn’t appreciate it. Jack pulled down his pants, pulled out some trashy porn magazine and proceeded to tug at his soft dick like it was chewing gum stuck to the sofa.
“What’s the point of this?” some kid asked as we all slowly lost interest. We were too young to know, but old enough to realize this whole thing was kind of weird.
“I’m not really sure…but it’s what you do when you look at tits..” answered Jack, a little defeated. It sounds like his older brother did this kid a disservice by only half explaining masturbation to him, though I’m sure the last thing he thought jack would be doing is relaying the information to a huddled crew of perv-interested rink grommets. It’d be another year or two before I truly understood what Jack was getting at and where he had failed.
I’m not sure if they designed our camp around how many kids could fit into one school bus, but it worked out perfectly that we did. This also meant that we spent a lot of time with the older kids who seemed huge and ancient to me but were probably only in high school. One day we took the bus to the local theater to see The Beastmaster or Timerider. I’m not sure which one because we saw both of these epic classics that summer at hockey camp.
The Beastmaster was a Conan the Barbarian style movie where a loinclothed hunk telepathically convenes with animals while carrying a large sword. I haven’t seen it since so my only memory was that he could see through the eyes of an eagle.
Timerider was about a desert motorcycle racer accidentally falling back into the wild west of the 1800s. Upon its theatrical release, one critic commented:
"At the point at which I walked out, about 55 minutes into the story, there hadn't been a single characterization, situation, line of dialogue, camera angle or joke to indicate that anyone connected with Timerider had the remotest idea of what he was doing..."
Ouch. I really liked it, but I was also 11 at the time.
On the way back from the movie, the bus stopped at a Dairy Queen where we were all treated to some Ice Cream. I can tell you without question or remembrance that I ordered the same cone I always did – vanilla dipped in red. Not cherry, or strawberry, or whatever flavor this combination of chemicals was pretending to be. Just red.
“Could I have a vanilla soft serve dipped?”
“Chocolate….or red?”
At the time, this was my most favorite question.
While we all pounded our cones on a hot summer night by the light of the illuminated DQ sign, one of the older kids suggested someone eat one of the bugs in the nest of mid-summer webbing behind the sign. For whatever reason, this initial request sparked a week long bug-off between two of the older kids. They started small, but over the course of a few days the two each challenged the other to match a bug they ate.
It became the daily entertainment on the bus, with campers helping to locate larger and grosser bugs by the day. It ended in my cabin one evening, where the whole camp gathered as one of the contestants was about to eat a bug I had never even seen before. Like some kind of jumbo spider/moth thing. It not only looked like every other bug combined, but this guy was meatier in the body then anything I had ever seen.
Did I mention they had to be consumed alive?
The memory of this one camper claiming his title as the undisputed bug eating king as he tipped his head back and dropped this massive, repulsive thing in his mouth is still with me to this day. I’m surprised no one puked, eater and viewers alike. The lesser contestant bowed-out in humbled defeat as any sane person would have done. From there they would have had to move onto small mammals as there was no more repulsive bug available to consume than whatever the thing was the victor had just put in his mouth.
The camp sessions lasted a week, starting on Sunday and ending the following Saturday. Most people just did one, but several of us were there for more than one week, which would mean on Saturday night the cabin would be almost empty.
One turnover night, it was just Jack and I and the counselor staying in the near empty cabin. Again, he seemed old, but the counselor was probably a 19 or 20 year old who played college hockey while hoping to go pro. In the summers, teaching and barely watching kids was probably decent money in his world.
The hockey camp wasn’t actually the only sub-camp on this campus. We had a sister figure skating camp with their own bus worth of campers who used the ice at the arena when we didn’t. This also meant there were figure skating counselors much like our friend who bunked with us under the guise of supervision.
On that Saturday night that it was just Jack and I, we both slept on top bunks next to the counselors single low bed. I was fast asleep in the dark when I felt someone tapping me. It was Jack trying to wake me up. Apparently the hockey counselor had brought “home” the skating counselor, who were both in his bed right under the wooden shelf with his deodorant and transistor radio.
Eventually she got up and we watched them both put their clothes on in the dim light. Jack and I did our best just waking up impressions and pretended we didn’t know what was going on, which wasn’t a stretch because I really didn’t. I knew adults did something like this because I’d seen Little Darlings, but my understanding was about as complete as Jack's masturbation lessons . Old enough to know it’s something, but too young to know what that something was. Before she left, the girl commented on how cute we were and then she tickled me.
When she was gone, our counselor slammed the lights on and bragged with the post coital excitement of a man who was so thankful for getting laid he didn’t even notice how sad it was to share it with such a young audience. He was particularly proud of how many “rubbers” he had gone through (three or four) which were balled up like discarded party balloons under the edge of his sad counselor twin bed.
I once had a friend who another mutual friend once said “…when he gets laid, we all get laid..” In reference to his infectious excitement. This felt similar. A week ago I didn’t even know what masturbating was (…one could argue I still didn’t, but still..) and here I was now….laid adjacent. By a figure skating instructor with a satin jacket and 80s hair no less.
If someone had told me at that time – in that dingy camp cabin, with a pile of used condoms on the dusty and splintered floor – that life doesn’t get any better than this…I would have believed them.
