It is 1982. I just turned 14 last month. It is the summer before 10th grade. Everyone I know in Shaker Heights, Ohio, unwaveringly follows The Preppy Handbook: a how-to manual that teaches us preppy values and culture such as consistency, nonchalance, charm, and athleticism. My own copy worn from perpetual riffling. Grosgrain ribbon belts, Lacoste, khakis, and striped, oversized rugby shirts. How many button-on Bermuda Bag covers you own determines who you are friends with and what parties you’ll be invited to. A uniform to be followed loyally and without divergence. People named Muffy and Biff and Chip, envied and emulated. If I follow it, I can ascend my Brooklyn-born, Jewish, sneaker-not-tennis-shoes status.
I am at a sleepaway camp in the Catskills. My parents call the Catskills the “Jewish Mountains”. According to The Preppy Handbook, this is a crucial part of life. I can’t believe that, somehow, I convinced my parents to pay for it. I think my mother may be having an affair with her art professor, so getting me out of the house is in her best interests right now. I can’t think of another reason for her sudden generosity and advocacy. I don’t care. I’m fulfilling my obligation as a suburban teenager in the ‘80s, and I am wild with excitement.
I know a few other kids who are here. Kids from temple youth group. We’ve played spin-the-bottle in the temple basement before, so I feel like they are fun people to spend the summer with. Except it is kind of weird that Helen and her brother Rod are here. He’s older, so he’s a counselor. They were two of the people that played spin-the-bottle, and they went in the closet together. I’m pretty sure they kiss a lot. I don’t have a brother, so I can’t tell. No one seems to care about it, so I guess I don’t either.
All the kids I know from home are staying in cabins. I am staying in what used to be a hotel that the camp randomly assigns to campers. It’s not fancy, but it’s better than the cabins. It’s really cool because I am with a group of girls from Long Island. It’s like they are a gang of Rizzos from Grease. When I first opened the door to our room, they were unplugging the smoke detector so we could smoke in the room without getting in trouble and passing around some kind of clear liquor that they stashed in their bags. They are older than me. Everyone here is older than me because you have to be in high school to go to this camp, and I skipped a few grades, but I think I’m pretty mature for my age. I can keep up. I smoke. Marlboros. And I drank a bunch at Thanksgiving last year. Also, Uncle Jimmy had me smoke some of his marijuana until I felt silly at Jon’s bar mitzvah, so I think I’ll be okay.
These Long Island girls are all named Debbie, and they all have dark brown hair styled in feathered layers like Farrah Fawcett. They have giant boobs and wear spaghetti-strapped white tank tops with colored bras that I can see, tan lines from their string bikinis revealing the uncooked parts of their skin, cut-off faded-blue Levi’s shorts that rise up and expose the bottom curve of their butts. They call me “Baby” with their thick, delicious accents. They French inhale. They talk about “being on the rag,” which I just learned means having your period. I still don’t have my period. They ooze sex. They are unapologetic. They are nothing like the girls in The Preppy Handbook.
I am inspired to try new things so I can contribute to our late-night smoke and gab sessions. Lights-out in our room means “light-up and give-it-up.” We hang out the window, making O’s, and I try to suck my exhales up my nose without coughing. The Debbies are always sneaking over to the boys’ cabins at night.
I don’t think I’m ready for that yet. Maybe in a few weeks.
What I am ready for, and try almost every chance I get, is when I’m sitting next to a boy at dinner, or during activities at night, or by the campfires, I rub their thighs. Sometimes I do it under tables, or, if I’m feeling particularly wild, I do it right out in the open! I like to scrape my nails, which the Debbies have painted red, across the fabric of their shorts—moving closer and closer up. I stare at them while I do it. It’s so funny to watch their faces turn pink and then red as the tent in their pants puffs out. They squirm. I like the power I feel when I make them squirm. They sweat. Their eyes dart. Their breath becomes shallow and fast.
The only person I won’t do this to is Todd. I really like Todd. He is almost 18, going to college in the fall and is very, very handsome. He has brown curly hair and warm honey-brown eyes. He’s from Canada. Instead of playing with his shorts I am learning sign language so I can speak to him. He is part of the group of deaf kids here. It’s a mitzvah (blessing) that they are here. I think that when I decide to go to a boy’s cabin one night, it will be his.
Every day, instead of swimming or canoeing in the lake, I have spent hours with the deaf kids. Floating and flittering my fingers and palms. I emote with wide swashing arm movements and intricate hand gestures. The Hatikva (Jewish National Anthem) transformed into a Jewish hula. My limbs conjure the ancestors. And Todd. Seductive and sensual. I am transported. I am the Matriarchs. I am Ruth. I am Sarah. It’s kind of funny because I don’t even really believe in God. Maybe I should feel guilty? Or bad? It doesn’t matter. It’s a Mitzvah!
I am captivated by my altruistic benevolence. I am like Mary, elevated by my association with Todd. Although, I don’t think I’m supposed to feel connected with her.
In a flash it is the last weekend of camp. It is now or never.
Friday night service and bonfire occurs with no shorts rubbing. I am saving myself. We sing songs like “Lo Yisa Goy el goy cherev, Lo yil’medu od milchamah.” (We can choose darkness, or we can choose light.) But the Debbies and I have changed the words Weird Al Yankovic style into “Don’t kiss a boy if he’s a goy, but give him two if he’s a jew” and Ma-Gadlu Ma’asecha Yah (How great is your work, oh God, how very deep are your thoughts) into “Ma got screwed in the teyatrone (theater) by the Rabbi!”
Rabbi David strums his guitar and sings a lot of Cat Stevens songs about regretting choices and life passing you by. We all feel nostalgia for a time when we will be older thinking back on our carefree, teenage years. But I don’t feel very carefree, and I can’t stop thinking about Todd and his thighs. His sun-kissed, brown, thick thighs. Wafts of golden-tipped curls that glisten and cling to his Canadian, soccer-playing thighs.
Saturday comes, and the day is filled with the Debbies doting on me in support of my maiden voyage to the boys’ cabin. It’s how I imagine a Mikvah (ritual bath) would feel. I feel like a bride. Or a sacrifice. A virgin sacrifice. They brush and French braid my hair. They carefully apply frosted blue shadow across my eyelids. Dab my lips with watermelon lip smackers. Spritz me with Love’s Baby Soft all over. Including my privates. It tickles and burns, but I am certain that the Debbies know what they are doing. I have seen the spoils of their efforts, the wake of teenage Jewish boys turned to putty, under their spells.
Havdalah (service ending shabbat) is over. There are no more cats in the cradle.
Under the dark cover of night, hanging out of the small window of our room, the Debbies and I share a Marlboro. We pass it between the four of us, with the seriousness of soldiers preparing to storm a castle. We each offer a “last night” pledge of no regrets with shots of Manischewitz that one of the Debbies stole from Rabbi David’s office. I vow to touch it. I vow to not allow summer to end without me actually touching it. I swig the thick, purply-sweet wine. I will not not touch it. I am buzzing and vibrating in anticipation, as I wait for the Debbies to tell me that it is time to go.
The August moon is high and full over the vast black fields of the camp. Stars, shooting and stuck in what I think are constellations shine but don’t offer much help as I navigate my way. Slithering close to the earth over the damp, dew-covered grasses of the Catskills, I make my way to the deaf boys’ cabin.
I signed to Todd during song circle that he would have a visitor tonight. He smiled, but I can’t be sure that I signed what I thought I did. I’m still learning and mostly make stuff up.
I make it to the deaf boys’ cabin. Tiptoeing, I try not to make a sound. I don’t want to wake anyone up. I don’t want to get caught. Slowly, carefully, I turn the knob and push open the screen door. I start when I hear a snore. My heart pounds in my chest. I quiver with anticipation and excitement. No regrets.
I close the door behind me, holding my breath, fearful of a vacuum of wind sucking the door into a slam. I sneak through the bunks. Silver moonlight outlines the faces of the sleeping deaf boys. The wafts of darkening fuzz above their lips glow and dance to the beat of their breath. The murmurs of their dreams whispering. And I find him.
His warm honey brown eyes framed by his sun-kissed curly hair spread in coils on the summer browned skin of his forehead. Naked shoulders, broad and manly. Small tufts of hair sprouting in a tantalizing trail leading down, below the band of his tighty-whiteys. Left leg curled atop the white sheet, halo-blue in the moonlight, right leg disappearing beneath.
He is awake. He is awake and waiting for me.
What the fuck am I doing here?
He raises his left arm, lifting the sheet along with it billowing like a wing, inviting me in. I enter, enveloped in his warmth. His welcome. It is sweet and inviting and terrifyingly exhilarating.
Against my thigh, I feel it under the sheet. Growing. Thickening. It is exciting, invigorating. I feel tingly and powerful and powerless. I am unsure what I am supposed to do next.
Todd is signing something to me. I don’t understand. I don’t know these signs. They are not familiar; they are not something that Cat Stevens or Rabbi David have sung about.
He says, “Touch me.”
I don’t understand. I have never heard his voice before: it’s strained and discordant.
“Touch me.”
I am still and silent.
“Touch me. Down there.”
I do. I touch it. I slide my hand below the taught, striped waistband, and I feel it.
And I scream.
At the top of my lungs.
In his face.
In his face I scream at the hard wigglyness.
I look around, afraid that I have woken the others, disturbed their sleep. And then I remember: no one in this cabin can hear me. I jump out of his bed; I throw myself at the door. And I run. I run, laughing, and shivering and shaking all the way back to my room, across the dark fields covered in a blanket of stars and moonlight, where the Debbies are waiting for me, with a cigarette and a shot of Manischewitz.
“I did it! I touched one!”