When I was a kid, around this time every year, my brothers and I would beg my dad to send us to camp. In particular, I would bug him relentlessly about it, complaining that all my cool friends went to overnight camp during the summer . . . on account of the fact that their dads loved them. Because one of the defining aspects of my dad's personality is his Scottish frugality, he never bit. Years went by before, FINALLY, he submitted.

It was a banner day in the Dawes household. On a little wall calendar in my room, I counted down the days until we left for camp like one might count down the days until Christmas or the days until the AIDS test results are supposed to arrive. In big red marker, I wrote "CAMP HIGHROAD" in the little square for the day we were going to hit the road for the hills of southern Virginia.

I thought it was going to be one of those regular old sleepaway camps that other kids go to when their parents want to begin their trial separation or have sex all over the house for a couple of weeks. When I arrived, I realized just how wrong I was. "Camp Highroad" was anything but regular.

It was, in fact, Jesus Camp.

That's right, since the OTHER defining aspect of my dad's personality is his fundamentalism, he would only send me and my brothers to Jesus Camp. I guess he figured that if he was going to waste his hard earned government employee money on a camp, his children better get some eternal salvation in the process.

"Camp Highroad" (D'OH! The name should have tipped me off!) was just like every other camp. We did the same activities that everybody else did at every other camp. The only difference was that we did them all for the glory of Jesus. We went canoeing . . . for Jesus. We did the zipline . . . for Jesus. We gave each other atomic wedgies . . . for Jesus, I guess.

Funny thing is, it didn't really dawn on me how odd it might be that I was attending Jesus Camp. Growing up with a born-again Christian father, the kids at the camp did the same things I did back home. At home, I also had group prayers before each meal; at home, I also went to church against my will; at home, I also guiltily masturbated and sternly looked at my post-rub flaccid soba noodle with dismay.

Camp was pretty much the same routine except with more people and trees around.

The highlight of camp had to be the campfire. Every night, we sat around a huge bonfire and read sermons and sang songs about the second coming of Jesus. We roasted marshmallows, or as the counselors liked to call them, "Jews." *

It was a regular Jesus Jamboree with splashes of fear and xenophobia thrown in.

I imagine Camp Highroad had the same type of kids as a regular sleepaway camp. The only difference, I later realized, was that a lot of the kids at Highroad were clearly there to learn how to let Jesus, the Son of God, enter into their young hearts so that they wouldn't be tempted to let Hay-soos, the Poolboy, enter into their young buttholes. It was probably an unspoken mission of Camp Highroad to exorcise "faggotry" wherever it reared its ugly head. It definitely couldn't be an EXPLICIT reason for the camp, could it?

I mean, this was the 80s, remember: the American public didn't really have a handle on the concept of homosexuality the way they do now. Back in the 80s, no one could imagine so many men were hardcore taking it in the ass the way that we know now they actually do. But enough about Republican congressmen.

My point is, the country, at large, was oblivious to the omnipresence of puckering starfish. Don't believe me?

Remember how the ladies thought George Michael was a sex symbol in the 80s? Remember how people believed that Brooke Shields and Michael Jackson were an actual item? Remember how Richard Simmons was able to effectively defend his heterosexuality in the press? I think years from now, we will probably dub that decade the "Flaming 80s." (I coined it here, remember that!)

Not surprisingly, any camp that had an agenda to stomp out queer proclivities was going to be chockful of . . . queer proclivities.

It shouldn't shock you then that my second strongest memory from Camp Highroad involves being constantly exposed to cock. After daily swimming class, all the kids AND counselors showered in communal showers together. Then they would casually walk around the changing room naked like it was some ancient Greek mentorship program. Some of the counselors even did the overtly homosexual maneuver (as seen at "CRUNCH" fitness) of putting on every single bit of clothing, even socks and watch, before finally, and begrudgingly, shimmying into their tight briefs. Even at that young age, I knew something was fucked up about that. Tube socks, a Casio, and a cock should never, ever be seen at the same time. I think that is actually a subset of the Heisenberg principle.

I also knew there was something VERY wrong about the sight of a 12 year-old kid with a two inch hairless acorn standing next to a 25 year-old counselor lathering his hair -- arms up in a Calvin Klein billboard pose -- as shampoo froth funneled down through his butt cheeks. I seemed to be the only person who was freaked out by the "openness" of it all. I never showered once. I would just sit there, mouth agape, looking at all the different dicks like bizarre fish in an aquarium. This was probably how Darwin felt after his first trip to the Galapagos.

Having only seen my own kit and caboodle previously, I was shell-shocked. I remember, at one point, staring at this southern kid Jake's penis. He was a pale kid and his penis looked painfully purple and diminutive. It was like someone had sewn a maroon button into the seam of his crotch. I gazed, slack-jawed in astonishment. All of a sudden, he shouted across the locker room in a squeaky Huckleberry Hound accent: "Hey, what are you lookin' at? We all got one!"

I wanted to say, "Yeah, but not a purple one like THAT, E.T.! It looks like it got burned in a space fire!"

Instead, I tried to play it off with this defense: "I'm not looking at it, I'm just thinking about something."

The worst part about class with the NAMBLA synchronized swim team was the fact that I was a crappy swimmer. To get around the swim test towards the end of week, I gave myself "the flu" by asking to see the nurse and putting the thermometer against a desk lamp bulb when she wasn't looking. My temperature came out to 120 degrees. I exclaimed, "Wow, I didn't realize I was that sick!" The nurse gave me a knowing smirk and wrote a pass to excuse me. Thankfully, I wouldn't have to do the backstroke for Jesus.

I did, however, have my first fight for Jesus.

I don't remember exactly why I got into a fight with this particular kid. I just remember that he baby talked a lot. Many of the kids there baby talked about the Bible and "horsies" and stuff, and it irked the everliving fuck out of me. I would look around when the kid was doing it, like "Is it just me!?" I felt like the protagonist in one of those action films where you have to convince the President's Cabinet that such and such is going to end the world and they look at you like YOU'RE the one smoking the crack pipe.

Much like this President and his Cabinet, I found a lousy pretense other than the truth (the baby talk) to attack, and I preemptively pushed the kid. I don't think punches were thrown. I just remember him pinning my head against the dusty wood slats of the cabin floor and saying, in the baby talkiest of baby talk voices: "Okay, aw you weady to quit now? Can't we be fwiends?" It was beyond humiliating.

I will say this about Camp Highroad: that place works! By the end of camp, any latent gay I might have had in me was wiped completely out thanks to baby talking quasi-fags and ugly purple cocks burning indelible scars into the parts of my brain responsible for shame, sexual gratification, and long-term memory.

Not only that, but I DID have a born-again moment at that camp, as well, where I asked Jesus to enter into my heart.

I vividly remember when it happened, and it was also probably the FIRST time I sincerely prayed to Jesus. The night after the fight, I became overwhelmed with emotion. I was uncertain of who to turn to, or where to go to share my pain and humiliation, so I dropped to my knees by my short-sheeted cot and prayed:

"Dear Jesus. . . . Please get me the fuck out of Jesus Camp . . . in Jesus' name I pray. . . . Amen. "

The next day, I called my dad at the camp office and told him to pick me up two days early.

I thought he would be furious with me for not finishing the program, but, as he has my entire life, he surprised me with his kind and gentle nature. He didn't tell me I was a disappointment to him or say one stern word. He even took me to Arby's, my favorite restaurant, for lunch. He didn't ask me about God, and he didn't make me talk about the fight, the forfeited swim test, or the fags. Despite his Republican fundamentalism, I think he knew that, more than a soul that needed saving, I was his confused and scared son. So . . . we just sat there, father and son, eating roast beef in silent understanding.

POSTSCRIPT: Years later, I asked my dad if he sent me there because he thought I might be gay. He categorically denied it. I did have a horribly sibilant "S" growing up, and one time, literally, he thought my sloppy diction was the result of my being possessed by the Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues.** When I got older, I suspected that HE suspected the thick "s's" coming out were an indication that I was coming out; and that I sounded funny, not because I was being possessed by a spirit, but because I had a penchant for penis.

If I could go back in time, I would like to mess with his head. I would creak open his bedroom door in the middle of the night, and speak in a gravelly demonic voice: "Help me, Father, I'm being possessed by the spirit of . . . VERSACEEEE! HEY-EYYYYY!"

Then again, that might have meant a lot more Jesus Camp.

* * *

*That last sentence is a lie. But I suspect some of the counselors THOUGHT that.

**No lie, that's a 100 perthent true thtory.

Posted by Bill Dawes at 9:33 PM

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