Camptown Ladies

by Mari SanGiovanni

  I boxed my own ears with another good swat just to make my point.

  Lisa came a few steps closer with her weed whacker still in hand as she plucked my shirt from the tree.

  “That shirt could be filled with bees!” I screamed as she tossed it at me. I screamed bloody murder all over again, swatting the shirt to the ground, then kicking it away as neighbors ran outside to help.

  Lisa waved off the neighbors and moved toward me with that smirk on her face. I’d seen that expression so many times growing up, and I braced myself. Whatever she had coming, it couldn’t be as bad as what almost happened to me. I had just survived a killer bee attack.

  Lisa pushed the button to start the weed whacker and it made a droning buzz, buzz sound . . . my swarm of bees.

  “Put on your shirt, you fucking imbecile,” she said.

  Five

  Allowing Others to Touch Your Wood

  Dad, akaWoody, was at his pyramid, making his never-ending adjustments, when Eddie took a break to chat with him while puffing on a cigarette like Greta Garbo. This conversation would be too good to resist, so I took the long way around the Camp Store to stand unnoticed behind the wood pyramid, the plastic wrap glistening in the noonday sun.

  I pretended to inspect the shingles on the side of the laundry room, in case Lisa happened by again. Lisa had already been by to tease Dad once already, going off about pyramids and then segueing to ancient predictions about the end of the world: “What makes people think just because it was written a long time ago on some ancient scroll, that it wasn’t written by the Mayan equivalent of the Enquirer? There were probably tons of reporters around to write what idiots said or did—just like they do for the celebri-tards today.” Dad just gave a few uh-huhs and continued to tweak his wood.

  I observed that Eddie was dressed like an Oscar hopeful D-list actress portraying a pretty but downtrodden scrubwoman. His golden hair was protectively tucked under a dew rag (black polka dots on pink silk, with black velvet piping), knotted in front. Feminine as he was, no woman would have the balls to publicly wear the floral housecoat he had gotten a hold of, but if anyone did, it might have been Dad’s sister, Aunt Aggie.

  “This is some fabulous wood you have here, Mr. Santora,” Eddie said, “and believe me, I know good wood when I see it.”

  “Why, thanks Eddie. You’re a man of great taste.”

  Eddie chuckled and I could hear a smile in my father’s voice and could tell he was playing with Eddie, who had no idea my father had learned a fair bit of gay slang after our trip to Jamaica last year.

  I marveled at my Dad’s liberal view of a guy like Eddie. Dad once told me that in the neighborhood where he grew up, the fanuks were regularly beaten straight, so they rarely came outdoors, and this was how the term “coming out” came to be. Dad had clarified, “I like the ones that come out. It’s the fake straight ones I don’t like.” Amen to that, I’d later agree. Nobody hates the fake ones more than the recently dumped.

  I could see Eddie’s hip jutting out in his pronounced way, his trim waist adorned with a Homo Depot tool belt he wore like a mini-skirt. He had taken the time to trim it in matching orange-colored Victorian lace. Only Eddie could make a tool belt into a fashion accessory.

  “Your wood is a work of art,” Eddie continued, “a monolith, a glorious Easter Island sculpture right here in Foster, Rhode Island.”

  Dad said wistfully, “If only my daughters could appreciate the beauty of wood like you do.”

  I heard the sticky sound of Dad lovingly patting his plastic wrap, as Eddie agreed and said, “You said a mouthful, Mr. Santora. What dykes know about art, could fit in my fanny.”

  They both laughed. This was my father?

  “Besides, if they really appreciated wood, they wouldn’t be lesbos now, would they?” Eddie said.

  “I try not to judge,” Dad said. I wondered on which day he had tried not to judge?

  “You know, Mr. Santora,” Eddie said, “if you structured this just a bit differently, when people came to take the wood, we could make sure the pyramid design doesn’t get ruined.”

  “Take . . . the wood?” Dad said, appalled.

  Uh-oh.

  “Yeah, we could pretty it up even more and have the folks take the wood from one side only, so the bundles would roll down and replenish itself from the tip.” I was pretty sure Eddie brought up the whole conversation just to say “replenish itself from the tip” and that he had no idea he was breaking the big news Dad had not considered.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Dad said, unprepared to commit, still reeling from the shock that people might someday be defiling his creation.

  I could hear shouting coming out of the Guys & Girls Camp Store, so I left Eddie to deal with the trauma he’d started. Mom and Aggie were loudly debating color schemes and when I walked in, they were stationed at opposite sides of the store, waving color swatches at each other. It appeared Mom wanted an eggshell white, while Aunt Aggie campaigned for the robin’s egg blue swatch in her chubby fist. I saw my chance to direct Mom, while knowing I ran the risk of getting taken out by fight shrapnel, which was quite common in our family.

  “Lisa already decided on the colors,” I said, and Mom sighed as if I had wasted a year of her life.

  Aunt Aggie snapped, “So why are we even here?”

  I wanted to ask that very question myself, but I didn’t dare.

  “So, what are the colors?” Mom asked, followed by a second Darth Vader sigh.

  “Pale olive green on one side, and lavender on the other,” I answered.

  “It’ll look ridiculous, but whatever she wants,” Mom said. She began rifling though the swatches for the least-offending versions of olive and lavender as Aggie snorted behind her. They shook their heads in unison—a silent agreement that despite each other being wrong, the younger generation didn’t have a clue.

  Mom walked over to the “Girls” side of the store near the feminine products section, and held the lavender swatch against the wall. It looked good against the blue packaging on the tampon shelf, but I had to correct her.

  “Nope,” I said, “olive green is for the girls’ side and lavender is for the boys’.”

  “What?” Aggie and Mom said together, as if I had commanded them to strip naked and call a taxi.

  “That’s what Lisa wants,” I said, leaving the store with Mom and Aunt Aggie in amicable agreement that my sister and I were stupid asses, a fact that many couldn’t argue. Nothing could bring Aunt Aggie and Mom to a united front more quickly than ganging up on one of the kids.

  “They take after their father,” I heard Mom hiss, and Aunt Aggie cackled in agreement.

  Outside, I found Eddie had convinced Dad to take steps to preserve his art. He had begun structuring a second wall of wood around the base of the pyramid, while Dad stood silently, as if observing a molestation. Eddie continued to plead his case for the changes, and he was as animated as a young mother in a supermarket, trying to keep her spoiled child from losing his shit.

  Eddie said, “When people take the wood from this area, the pile will spill from the top to this second protective wall, like a moat. This way, you can just replenish the pyramid from the top. It’ll keep the design from getting ruined by people taking wood from wherever the fuck they please. Otherwise they’ll ruin this beauty.”

  This must have convinced Dad, because he spun into action as if he had joined the Red Cross to haul emergency sandbags to shore up a dyke. He was moving so quickly, I was tempted to yell, “We must save the village!” but decided to leave them be.

  Two problems solved, I thought, as I wondered where my brother and sister had gone off. I walked the main trail of the camp and noticed it had gotten cold enough to see my breath. Aunt Aggie and Lisa must be in heaven, I thought, wishing I had inherited their tolerance of the cold. California weather had suited me. I had always thought of the cold weather like an enemy encroaching on my camp—this time, literally. I did feel some comfort in the colder weather; i
t was a reminder that I was far away, from California, and from Lorn.

  A few of the year-rounders had opted to leave their trailers for the late fall and winter, despite the sale of the camp. Many were likely to never move again, since the years of occupying the same patch of woods had encapsulated them in the trees. There were dozens of trees that would have to be cut to get the trailers out, but this would prove impossible as well since it was clear the trees were the only things holding some of them together.

  There were signs of life, though. Family signs: The Williams, The Homans, The Rileys, The Henrys, and The Sarnos, each announcing their family’s presence with a favorite icon or theme. I made a mental list of the most popular: Winnie the Pooh, Mickey Mouse, butterflies, frogs, and the ever-popular Betty Boop squatting (panties showing) over a tiny garden of tulips.

  Most signs were handmade, badly drawn cartoon characters sawed roughly out of painted wood. Crafty but deformed renditions of Mickey, Minnie, and Betty stared back at me with creepy, asymmetrical eyes, and peeled painted skin, appearing like radiation burned versions of their more famous counterparts. Some sites had “duplicates” for sale, standing in line like cartoon solders, each attempts at a duplicate of the last, some morphing badly from the more careful first whack of the camper’s newly acquired jigsaw. The originals, more carefully cut and painted, proudly sported “This one not for sale” signs.

  Some campsites had remnants of past holidays and seasons; July 4th flags as whirligigs, garden stakes made of sawed-out wood tulips, random Halloween characters scattered in trees and on trailers for the holiday weekends, all compacted on a camper’s calendar and celebrated between spring and early fall. Christmas in July was the most observed holiday, celebrated with chunky wooden Mr. and Mrs. Claus characters perched on porches, and leaning against children’s bikes and skateboards as if on guard duty.

  There were more unique sites, revealing a bizarre cottage industry that had taken hold of the camp. People had taken to selling oddball crafts, and advertised them by tacking up signs on the walls of the public toilets, zipped inside clear plastic baggies for protection from the rain. Inside were photos of items for sale, with a site number for easy shopping. There were knitted scarves shaped like giant caterpillars and snakes, crudely painted initials that appeared hacked out by a drunken woodworker set loose on a scroll saw binge, and an odd assortment of giant bugs and figures made from common household items. My favorite was an aluminum soda can, split open, rolled and painted to look like a ladybug, with the words “CLING PEACHES IN LIGHT SYRUP” still visible under the washy red coat of paint. I noted the sun-washed gray polka dots on the wings, which were probably black last summer, but had not weathered through the miscalculated overstock inventory, which made me wonder if things ever got marked down.

  One seller specialized in several variations of a Tin Man made of vegetable cans, and a smaller version where the character’s “pants can” could be pulled down. Leaving nothing to chance, there was a red arrow pointing down to the tin man’s crotch and the word “PULL!” painted on his tomato sauce can belly. If you did as instructed, you were rewarded with the revealing of a stubby penis made of wood and mounted on a spring for movement. There were signs everywhere shouting the prices based on size of the cans, and Polaroid photos of happy buyers trapped in Ziploc bags, their ghosting images fading in the sun as they posed with their new tin friend, all tasteful photos with the pants cans in the up position.

  Most of the buyers were men, but there was an occasional woman, and even one grandmother who posed with two younger generations of Tin Man buyers grinning toothlessly at the secret of the spring-loaded penis. Small veggie and soup can Tin Mans went for $10, while larger coffee can Tin Mans went for $15, and the tiny Tin Man went for $8. I noticed the smallest size had to forego the spring movement and thought it a shame. I decided that once the tin can artist opened up shop again I would have to get the large or medium Tin Man as a gift for Eddie.

  The owner of the site is Ray, a fact deduced from a sign hung on his tree: “WELCOME TO MY SITE! I AM RAY, MAYOR OF THE CAMP!” The mayor may have loved his self-appointed position, but he didn’t trust his constituents; a fact revealed by the way he permanently soldered the feet of the Tin Man samples to an iron railing of his deck. Ray would be a guy I would have to meet. Next door to Ray the Mayor was a sign announcing the Town Sheriff, and two trailers after that was the Tax Collector, who had nailed a bucket to a tree with “Tax Donations” painted on the side and a promise to use the taxes for buying flowers for the shared areas of the campground.

  I continued looking for Lisa and Vince, but my distractions had slowed me a bit. The trees were heavily dropping their brittle brick-colored needles and would have to be attended to in order to keep the fire hazard low around the campfires. I decided I might take that project on, since, strangely, Lisa had not assigned me a job.

  As I looked up at a particularly tall pine, I wondered if my sister thought I was in too fragile of a state to boss around. That would be a first, I thought, as the pine tree reminded me of a dream I had last night. It had waited for just the right moment to sneak up on me with a memory of a dream about Lorn. Cruel how dreams can do that, lie dormant all day, then sneak attack when you least expect it.

  In the dream, I had been in California, looking up at a palm tree, which I noticed was branded PALM TREE along the entire length of the trunk. I looked around and realized every palm tree in sight had been branded this way. It was then in the dream that Lorn approached me, sliding her hand into mine.

  “Beautiful, aren’t they?” she said.

  “I guess,” I answered, but I wanted to tell her the branding of the trunks concerned me. Instead, I kept it to myself and tried to admire the perfect palm fronds bursting at the top, each tree identical to the one that stood beside it. This was when I noticed that the underside of the palms looked as if they had been molded from a green plastic and realized in dismay that none of them were real. The trees I had passed by and admired each day on the way up to my house in Hollywood Hills had been fake, and it struck me now that the dream made me feel they were tackier than a penis-popping Tin Can Man.

  In the dream, I had looked at Lorn, noticing her hair was not the same stunning auburn red I had loved so much, and wondered if the color had been fake as well. “I love you,” she said, interrupting my thoughts. “Not enough,” I’d answered in the dream, and her hand slipped out of mine.

  A distant banging broke me out of the memory and I walked toward it to find Lisa and Vince attempting to repair a bathhouse. Lisa was in the more dangerous roof position, while Vince was below her, handing her the supplies.

  She was yelling down to Vince. “I’m thinking if this particular shitter ends up being on the Camp Camp boys side, I should have glory holes built right into the bathroom stall walls. Sort of a nice perk, don’t you think?”

  “I guess,” Vince answered, paling at the thought.

  “In the long run, it’ll save us from some hack job, since you know they’ll cut the holes anyway. This way, we cut a professional hole, and maybe even line it with some vinyl padding, just to avoid a lawsuit when some horn dog gets a splinter in his dick.”

  Lisa let go of her toolbox and it slid off the roof, carrying a strip of shingles with it, raining down the other side of the building.

  “Whoops,” Lisa said, “accidents happen.”

  Vince said, “Yeah, well it might be a good time for me to tell you about Martina. The neighbor’s kid didn’t do it.” She glared at him. “It was their fucking dog.”

  I yelled over to them, “You guys really need to wait for the contractor, or someone’s going to get hurt!”

  Lisa said, “Hey Marie, as long as you are doing nothing, go get Eddie to pick a good color for the vinyl to line the holes in the men’s bathrooms. I’ll try to figure out a way to advertise it without being tacky. Something like: ‘All the men’s stalls outfitted for easy toilet paper passing’ or something like that.”
r />   Six

  Campgrounds, Catholics & Curses

  Campgrounds practiced strange traditions like cramming all the holidays into the short camping season, and Lisa had plans to do the same. My enthusiasm for scheduling events for Christmas in July made me wonder if my religious past was rearing its ugly head again. My relationship with God had always increased during the lowest points in my life, like whenever I was nursing a breakup, or retching over a toilet. I was a foul-weather Catholic.

  I wasn’t religious in the homosexuals-are-going-to-hell way, of course. I was more the if-you-steal-something-you-will-pay-for-it-tenfold way. Lisa, Vince, and I all had a similar lack of enthusiasm for religion, amplified by our aunts and uncles, who were old school Italians and reveled in all Roman Catholic traditions. Lisa said once, “You know you were raised by a bunch of fucking Italians when a candle promises a scent of Christmas Eve, and you expect it to smell like fish.”

  It was one of the many oddities that differed us from our peers. You grow up figuring that everyone does the seven fishes thing on Christmas Eve, sitting around a table eating struffoli and torrone and never daring to eat meat until after midnight. We thought all kids knew the secret of how to lift the Malocci curse, which could be passed along only by the eldest male relative, and only on Christmas Eve. The Malocci is a headache curse caused by someone who is thinking ill thoughts of you, and the curse is lifted by saying a special prayer while running oil down a finger into a bowl of water. Throughout the year, if there is no elderly relative handy, an Italian horn may ward away this curse in a pinch. The blood red horn, usually plastic with a gold crown on the thick end of it, also plastic, was easily found in heavily populated Italian neighborhoods. Gas station convenience stores often had them near the front counter with the Life Savers. As kids we were not swayed by the cheapness of this item. We believed it had special powers because our grandmother wore a small one right alongside her crucifix and her gold Number 13 necklace.