Gawky

by Margot Leitman

  Although my mom clearly lived her own high school experience to the fullest (I would often sneak peeks at her high school yearbook, filled with inscriptions from cute 1960s boys who were all openly in love with her), she sensed my lack of excitement about the four years that lay ahead. Once the logistics of my brother’s college tuition were all taken care of, my mom offered me a compromise.

  “Margot, your father and I thought, since we can’t send you you-know-where”—my mother delicately avoided mentioning my dream school by name—“we could at least send you here.” She then passed me a brochure for what was essentially a Disneyland for weird kids: Camp Wallobee, a place for “Youths Who Excel in the Arts.” I opened it up to find a summer curriculum that was every artsy-fartsy kid’s wet dream: dance classes, music classes, a radio station, theatre, video classes, and horseback riding. What was up with summer camps’ fascination with horses? Eh, well, at least there would be other things to do than ride horses. At Camp Wallobee I would make art. It actually looked amazing.

  I counted down the days until it was time to go off to sleepaway camp, renting relevant movies from the local video store for research. I watched films like Sleepaway Camp and Friday the 13th. So many great horror films took place at camps. In these movies, teenagers were always sneaking off to the woods to go neck while a man with a mask and a chain saw lurked in the bushes. Living on the edge like that was just the spice my life needed.

  About a month later, my mother and father drove four hours with me to rural Pennsylvania—destination: Camp Wallobee. We pulled in off a winding dirt road to pure heaven. From the car window I could see depressed-looking kids in tie-dye, shaggy-haired boys sitting under trees with guitars, girls in leotards practicing a modern dance routine in the trampled green field.

  Camp Wallobee was going to be awesome.

  “Well, here we are,” said my father.

  As he put the car in park, my mother had already begun tearing up.

  “We’re going to miss you so much, sweetie,” she said.

  I grabbed my duffle bag and they walked with me to bunk 9, where the older girls resided. We were greeted by my bunk counselor, a young Brit named Agnes. My mother immediately bonded with her over their shared heritage.

  “How are you liking America? Are you missing anything from back home?” my mother asked, desperate to rehash some of her favorite vile British traditional foods with her new BFF, my counselor.

  “Oh, it’s nice so far. But it will be hard to go a whole summer without my Yorkshire pud.”

  Oh no! Seriously? One minute into camp and my mom is already discussing my least favorite food with my cool older counselor?

  “Oh, Margot hates Yorkshire pudding. In fact she even claimed to be allergic to it to get out of eating it!”

  “Allergic?” squealed the counselor. “To Yorkshire pud?” Agnes let out a cackling laugh, which my mother all too quickly joined in on. While they had a good hardy-har-har at my lack of love for beef-flavored pudding, I became anxious to unpack my 1970s wardrobe onto my bunk shelves. Eventually she hugged me good-bye.

  “You’ll be in good hands,” said my mother, glancing over at my British counselor.

  I didn’t care if I was in good hands or not. I just wanted to be among my people.

  Sure, the summer in between eighth and ninth grade was an odd time to start going to sleepaway camp, but I didn’t care. It was a new experience, and I was open to wherever it took me.

  I opened the creaky screen door to find a bunch of teenage girls with funky asymmetrical haircuts, almost all in vintage clothing and ’70s prints. Most of the girls in my bunk seemed mildly depressed, like me. They wore combat boots in the summer, had journals by the side of their bunks, and dried flowers in pretty blue bottles. I had found my element. These girls were the misfits in their hometowns, but at Camp Wallobee, they were cool. I quickly gravitated toward the saddest-looking girl, a morose teenage rebel named Jackie Angel. Jackie had a hippie mother, dyed black hair with bangs, and dark circles around her eyes, which made her truly the embodiment of cool chic. Even better, she was a whole year older than me. “Wanna listen to some music?” she asked, in her deep monotone voice.

  “Sure,” I said, as Jackie Angel took out some homemade mix tapes.

  “My mom loaned me some stuff—she’s got great taste. We could maybe, like, perform one of these songs in the talent show this week.”

  “Totally!” I said, and we quickly got to work. Jackie Angel was a good singer, unlike me. She seemed to understand what it meant to harmonize, while I just sang more quietly on the hard parts. On the second night of camp, we snuck into the costume shop and stole some cool outfits for me to wear that fall to high school. Somehow having a black-and-white embroidered jacket from Guatemala made me feel less scared to walk down that skuzzy path in the fall. By day three, Jackie Angel had convinced me to become a vegetarian. I discovered new foods like sprouts, chickpeas, and bulgur and I looked forward to using my dietary restrictions as an excuse for my paleness back home at the Jersey Shore.

  A few nights later I performed an obscure antiwar ballad with Jackie Angel in the camp talent show. I was disappointed that the Gulf War had ended before I had a chance to really protest, but this performance was a nice compromise. Afterward, we sat back down in the audience next to an Argentinean boy with long hair, who leaned over and said, “I like your song. It has good message.”

  Finally, I was getting discovered.

  “My band meets at east field tomorrow at noon,” he continued. “We like it if you ladies join.”

  Jackie Angel squeezed my hand.

  “Sure, that sounds cool,” I said, all aflutter.

  “Nah man, that’s cool, but thanks,” said Jackie Angel. She smiled at me. I realized she was letting me potentially be the star of the band, and she was okay with that. I’d known her for three days and already she seemed to care about me more than any friend I had met back home.

  The next day I joined the Argentinian boy’s band, PBJ. We were supercool because everyone thought PBJ stood for Peanut Butter and Jelly but it actually stood for Psychedelic Blow Jobs. We did only covers, no originals; we were saving those for our big-time record deal.

  That night I auditioned for a play. Camp Wallobee seemed to have a dozen plays rehearsing at all times, and most of them held no appeal for me. There were old-timey musicals and dramas and silly children’s theatre. But one play was perfect for me: Little Nell, an over-the-top melodrama about a damsel in distress. I was far from “Little,” but I thought it might be funny to put a now five-foot-nine-inch camper in the title role. Rodreigo, the youngest counselor in training, had already been cast as the male lead, so he got to sit in on the auditions. I looked around at all the petite girls auditioning before and after me and prayed the director would get my little joke. Thankfully, I aced the audition. I improvised a line at one point, saying to one of the shorter girls I was reading with, “You’re not short, you’re vertically challenged!” All the short girls were in stitches. When we finished the scene, Rodreigo pointed at me and said, “I want her.”

  I thought I had peaked singing my antiwar ballad a few nights before, but boy was I wrong. I had finally found my groove at Camp Wallobee. Perhaps if I lived there all year round, I could be happy. Jackie Angel and I stayed up almost every night in our bunk, having serious talks about kissing and boys and parents, developing a deeper connection. I practiced with PBJ for our final performance and rehearsed with Rodreigo for my play. Rodreigo and I never got anything done; we laughed and goofed off and rarely got around to rehearsing. There was only one other camper in our play, an odd quiet boy with glasses, and he was too busy strategizing his next move on his everlasting game of Risk.

  Rodreigo was only slightly older than I, but he seemed very worldly. He was smart, bilingual, and well traveled, and was like no one else I had ever met back home. On the other hand, our director seemed right out of Meatballs; she was more concerned with her days off and who was hooki
ng up with whom to focus on staging and character development. We spent the majority of our rehearsals gossiping about staff hookups, which felt fun to be on the inside track of. It turned out the Shakespeare director was shagging the costume designer. There were hardly any camper-to-camper hookups, as only about fifteen boys went to this camp, many of them were under twelve, and most of them were gay.

  The night of the show I got a little nervous. I had been there less than two weeks and was about to go onstage in front of the entire camp in a leading role. This was the first time I’d be the one making a public mockery of my size. In the past I had fallen victim to public taunts, but here, at Camp Wallobee, I knew that wouldn’t happen. At least, I was pretty sure. I was cool. I was cool at camp. I just hoped that the audience would get the joke when my character was introduced as “Little Nell.” Also, there was the small problem of me not knowing any of my lines due to incessant gossiping during our valuable rehearsal time. I’d never been the lead in a play before. In the summer theatre workshops back home it was all done musical-review-style. There were no words to remember. Just some kick ball changes while singing the hits of Andrew Lloyd Webber. This was big-time. I took solace in the fact that Rodreigo didn’t know his lines either. If we were going down, we’d go down together.

  The curtain opened. He delivered his opening monologue and then introduced my character, “Little Nell.” I took the stage in a pink and white puffy dress with a giant pink bow in my hair . . . and the crowd went wild, laughing in hysterics at the ultimate sight gag. It didn’t matter that we didn’t know our lines. They were enthralled by our genius hilarity. We plowed through the general idea of the script, basically improvising the entire thing and receiving uproarious applause at the end. This was the first time I had a little humor about my size. And giving the audience permission to laugh felt really badass. I friggin’ loved it.

  Rodreigo and I hugged at the end of the play, laughing at what we had just gotten away with. “You are so funny!” he said, after our embrace. “I couldn’t have gotten through that without you. It would have been a total disaster.”

  I didn’t need four years at an expensive arts high school. A week and a half at Camp Wallobee among my people was enough to make me begin to understand life beyond my small town. With one oversize pink bow I had proven myself as funny to a group of artsy teens, and most importantly Rodreigo, who I thought was just the greatest person. We looked around for our director so we could celebrate, but she was nowhere to be found. “She’s probably off giving a handy to the soccer coach,” said Rodreigo, cackling with laughter at his own joke. “Let’s go meet our fans.” He grabbed my hand and we went out to accept the uproarious accolades from the brooding teenagers waiting at the stage door. I lost Rodreigo somewhere in the shuffle, but it was okay. This kind of attention I loved . . . attention for an accomplishment, a talent (and I use that word loosely), not a crazy outfit or embarrassing moment. I was on fire.

  Camp flew by. I wished so bad I could have stayed there all summer—all right, more like the rest of my life. For my final performance with PBJ, I sang lead on a bittersweet “November Rain” and played tambourine on “Paint It Black.” I’d be lying to say anything less than “I nailed it.” I wore one of my father’s oversize white button-down work shirts with the sleeves cut off. I laced my combat boots over my Lee Relaxed Fit Extra-Long Riders and sported a backward white sailor’s hat. I had never felt sexier. Kids in the audience took pictures of me on their disposable Kodak cameras so they could remember this moment. Wow. I had wanted to rock for so long; now I finally was a rock star, not to mention a hilarious leading lady with a cool best friend, and it was time to go.

  PBJ decided to make the most of our last night at camp, sneaking out of our bunks to have a wild last night in the woods. Maybe we would even be chased by a dangerous masked man lurking in the woods. Unfortunately, the actual sneak-out proved uneventful; we mostly ended up walking in circles around the woods, trying to scare one another. The members of PBJ didn’t have much of a personal connection beyond the music, and truthfully that night made me doubt that we were bound strongly enough to ever get that record deal. I wondered if legendary bands like the Who were actually friends offstage. Surely Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend would find something to talk about deep in the woods. PBJ did not. We reviewed our last performance at the talent show, but beyond that we really had nothing else to talk about.

  “Good job, Margot.”

  “Thanks, Ben, good job on the guitar.”

  “Way to wail on that high note.”

  “Yeah.”

  No one even had weed, and this would have been the perfect night for me to try it. The girl who played tambourine had a bottle of Diet Coke from the canteen, but that was about it. If Jackie Angel had been there, we would have had some sort of be-in, but this sneak-out was for the birds. I made out with my Argentinean bandmate just because I was bored.

  Just before the sun started to rise, I arrived back at my bunk to find my British counselor, Agnes, wide awake, pacing with her arms crossed. She didn’t even give me a chance to attempt immunity with her by engaging in a discussion of traditional British foods. Before I could utter a word about blood pudding and Cadbury Flake candy bars, she brought me directly to the camp advisor’s office, where the rest of PBJ were also incarcerated. The camp advisor had already been informed there were campers on the loose. He seemed excited that he got to flex his barely used authoritative muscles. Artsy kids were so used to being teased that we rarely caused trouble. In camp horror movies, it’s always the hunky sports counselors and the big-boobed swim instructors that are first to die after they have sex in the woods. My kind of folk would simply lock the door and continue reading their novel by candlelight if there was a killer on the loose. As the sun came up, I listened to this man’s prewritten sneak-out lecture. Finally, he got to break out that old chestnut.

  “We have no tolerance for deviant behavior at Camp Wallobee,” began the aging camp advisor, who had clearly been smoking since he was fifteen. “I have alerted the local police, just in case.” I looked around at the other deviant campers, who all seemed to be stifling laughter. I was fairly certain he was lying about alerting the police. There were no cops anywhere to be found; he didn’t call the cops to tell them we had turned up; and I was fairly certain that even if he had alerted the cops, they had worse crimes to deal with than a few rebellious weird kids hanging out after hours. The camp director continued, “You will be stricken from our camp records; we don’t want alumni like you destroying the Wallobee name. You will be put on the Dangerous Camper List.”

  Dangerous Camper? I liked the sound of that. Jackie Angel hadn’t come with PBJ on the sneak-out, so I was thrilled to be more dangerous than she. I walked out of the camp office excited that I had made an impact. The sun was shining and all the campers were saying good-bye. I would not be allowed to return to Camp Wallobee, but it was just as well. Because of my age, next year I would have to be a counselor in training, and I had no interest in disciplining anyone, especially a bunch of flamboyant campers only slightly younger than me.

  My dad arrived to get me, conversing with the mole bunk counselor who had turned me in. He also got the same speech from the camp advisor regarding sneaking out against the rules. I wasn’t sure, but I thought I detected a smirk on his face when he was told I was on the “Dangerous Camper List.” There was no time for good-byes: My dad wanted to get in the car quickly to start the long drive home. I had already gotten Jackie Angel’s and Rodreigo’s info to keep in touch. Although I was a little disappointed I wouldn’t get to give them good-bye hugs, I’d rather a quick good-bye than brew on the fact that I was leaving the only place I ever felt at home. My new, delightfully weird friends from camp were going to be my social circle and ticket to a new life. I was absolutely going to stay in touch with Jackie Angel and Rodreigo. So what if I had no driver’s license and Jackie lived in Pennsylvania? So what if Rodreigo lived in Puerto Rico and there wasn’
t a shot in hell I’d ever visit there? I had just experienced three weeks of bliss and was headed home in high spirits about my future.

  My father sped off in our Plymouth Voyager down the long dirt road in silence. He had spent about fifteen summers of his life at camp, as both a camper and a counselor. In every childhood photo I had ever seen of him, he was wearing his camp uniform. Most of the people at our house parties drinking endless Rolling Rocks were his friends from camp. My father was the king of camp. I was terrified he would be mad at me for dishonoring the institution of camp.

  When we got to the highway, he finally spoke. “I’m proud of you, Margot. Nights like that are what camp is all about. You’ll remember last night more than any other night you’ve had here for the past three weeks. Live your life.”

  I smiled. I was finally cool, and my dad was, too. He understood our need to rebel against the rigid establishment of camp schedules and bunk rules. I decided not to tell him that last night was pretty tame compared to his swinging ’60s sneak-outs. I let him think I was a dangerous camper.

  CHAPTER 11:

  The AIDS Cookie

  High school was to begin a month after Camp Wallobee ended, and this year, starting school again was a little more tolerable knowing I had cool friends just a few hours away. A few weeks later that summer (though it felt like months), Jackie Angel invited me for a weekend in her hometown in rural Pennsylvania. To be honest, Jackie Angel’s invitation both terrified and exhilarated me. She was wild, she was older; her long dark bangs gave her a Demi Moore in Striptease vibe. And she was really into boys. I could tell guys liked Jackie Angel even though she was tall, almost as tall as I was. But it was clear that Jackie Angel was tall in a sexy way, not a gargantuan way like me. I imagined Jackie Angel could slink into a room, light up a cigarette, and strike up a conversation that would have every horny boy in the vicinity fighting for her approval.