Life is a Bowl of Cherries

The summer I turned 18, I decided to earn myself a little extra spending money for college in the fall by working as a counselor at Camp Haluwasa, located between the sin palaces of Atlantic City and the city of Philadelphia with its notoriously noxious drinking water. It was to be a five-week hitch, and while the money wasn’t all that much, it would be enough to keep me well-supplied with the college-girl necessities of pizza, beer and vending-machine cuisine.

I’d worked previous summers at an old-folks’ home and figured that after that, minding a collection of 6-to-14-year-old rugrats as they played on the beach, made crafts, picked scabs, scratched poison ivy and did all the other summer-camp activities would be a snap. And just think, there’d be no toothless bald guys in striped pajamas patting my ass and calling me Sugarplum.

That five-week job turned into a little piece of hell. The problem was that I hadn’t counted on the fact that most of the snot-gobblers were city kids from Baltimore and Philly, sassy and streetwise and many possessed of a roiling disgust for authority. They seemed to have never been told no in their lives and were not happy being the first.

I was assigned a cabin of six girls between the ages of about 12 and 14. Also assigned to this cabin was a senior counselor named Karen, who was supposed to be like my mentor, help with the kids and generally make things run smoothly. Only trouble was, Karen had apparently decided early on, for reasons known only to herself, that I, Amy Rae counselor with the country-girl accent and hips to match, was beneath contempt.

Karen was a very tall slim redhead with blue eyes and she was the only blue-eyed redhead I have ever known, then or since, who actually tanned instead of burned. She obviously took great pride in her looks, and every morning she’d be up early, hogging the cabin’s bathroom while she showered, styled her hair and painted her face and nails. She dressed to show off her body, always in skimpy shorts with butt cheeks hanging out and a bikini top with ample cleavage showing.

I won’t try to analyze why we did not get along, but I will say the bitch made my life as a counselor a hellish nightmare. She was always offering unsolicited “beauty tips” and offering them in a tone that suggested she knew they wouldn’t help me much but maybe, just maybe, I’d surprise her by improving a little. I just brushed off those little jabs, but something else the bitch did was far more annoying. Karen liked to criticize my methods of dealing with or disciplining the campers, and she did so in their presence. Anybody who knows anything at all about child psychology will tell you that if kids hear an “authority figure” being criticized by another “authority figure” then soon they will lose any respect for the one being cut down and will not obey her again. This is exactly what happened. I’d tell a child to do something, or not do something, and they would automatically appeal to Karen, who would often overrule me, except the one memorable time we told them it was okay to play in the poison ivy.

I had two bright spots in this unpleasant situation. Their names were Chiffon and Brad and they were both SC’s. Chiffon was a black girl, but an albino, something I had never seen before. She had light skin and blue eyes and her hair, though it was as kinky-curly as any black person’s, was a funny shade of yellow. Karen called her Lemon Chiffon behind her back, yet another reason to hate her.

Chiffon may have looked pretty strange, but that girl had eyes in the back of her head and the hearing of a good bird dog. Whenever the tension between me and Karen got to the point where I was afraid I’d lose my temper and say something I might be sorry for, Chiffon would stroll by, as if purely by chance, and diffuse things. She was always very polite and friendly when she sent the Bitch of the Beach off to tend some other camper or get some piece of equipment, and that made Karen crazy. She knew she was being punished but she could never prove it.

Brad was a counselor in one of the boys’ cabins. He was about twenty-one, your typical tall, dark and handsome football player type, but with a ponytail nearly as long as mine. Ask anybody, I’ve always been a sucker for a guy with a ponytail. Brad and I had met and exchanged banalities a few times, but it was Billy that brought us together in a different way.

One morning, Karen and I were supposed to be presiding over a very haphazard volleyball game between two teams of boys, some of whom were Brad’s charges. More accurately, I was sort of trying to preside and Karen was lying in the sun, working on her enviable tan and sulking because Chiffon had been by to rescue me and she’d been unexpectedly sharp when speaking to Beach Bitch. So there I was, trying to coach a game I know jack about and here was this brat Billy bawling and clinging to my leg like a puppy.

Billy was about nine, but small for his age and very immature. He cried at the drop of a hat and kept it up longer than any child should ever be allowed. The issue this morning was the fact I wouldn’t let him blow my whistle, and then he had refused to go back and the play the game. I quickly gave up trying to coax him and just hauled him around on my leg and didn’t pay him any more attention; except for the fact I wanted to smack him.

That’s when savior Brad showed up. He walked by, took in the scene and then stepped up, put his head close to mine and asked softly “Want some help here?”

“Please, yes!” I exclaimed, with profound relief.

Whereupon, Brad knelt down next to Billy Brat and said “Okay, Billy, enough. Get up and get back in the game.” Billy of course continued to cling and make those not so endearing hurt-puppy whimpers.

Brad took hold of the kid’s wrist and said “Act your age and get back in the game.” And what do you know; Billy got up and went snuffling off to join the other boys.

“Oh, thank you so much! How’d you do that?” I asked. Brad hemmed and hawed a little, then said he’d show me a trick if I wouldn’t tell anybody, since it was not strictly within the camp’s rules. I agreed and he took my wrist as if to pull me after him, but instead he pinched the soft skin on the inside of my wrist, and hard. Water came into my eyes and I slapped my free hand over my mouth to keep in “the ouch” I wanted to let loose.

Brad let my hand go and told me to look at the pinched place. I did, expecting to see a big black bruise. But all I saw was a little red mark that even now was fading to pink. The pain was going away just as fast. “That doesn’t work all the time,” Brad said. “But for the Billies of this world, it’s very effective.”

After that, Brad and I started chatting together in the evenings. He’d walk me back to my cabin and even kiss me good-night on the doorstep. He was a fairly good kisser too. I love a good kisser. Finally, we arranged to have our night off on the same date so we could go out for real. We were planning on going out for dinner and maybe a movie or a club, whichever was handy.

The Big Night was hot but breezy. I spent a long time in the bathroom getting ready. I decided to wear a short pink floral-print sundress and sandals. Not really dressy, but I thought the dress did a good job of showing off my own tan and it was both cute and comfortable. I stood in front of the sink and examined myself.

I am not a 10, but I do have my good points. I’m on the tall side, about five seven, and have a decent figure (even if the hips are a little wide) with a very small waist and long legs that I try to keep toned by skating and biking as often as possible. My breasts are only about a 32A, and I debated with myself over whether I should wear my push-up bra and look like a 32B. I decided to go braless because of the heat and besides, I was hoping for some good making-out later with Mr. Good Kisser and a bra would just be in the way.

I left my long straight dark-blonde hair loose except for a barrette in the top of it. I didn’t put on much makeup. My tan was as nice as Karen’s, thanks to the Algonquians in my ancestry. The dress’s low neck showed the white places on the top and sides of my breasts where my modest swimsuit had kept the sun out. I thought it looked kind of sexy that glimpse of creamy white against the dark brown.

I painted my nails Pink Lemonade polish I borrowed from Bitch Karen, even though I had the very same shade in my makeup bag-just for luck. I am sure she wouldn’t mind for a camp sister.

Our date started out to be totally ordinary. We ate at Friendly’s, which was the nicest we could afford, and then drove around looking for entertainments and not finding any. Brad had his own car, a 1988 Escort that I think was supposed to be blue but it was difficult to tell now. It could pick up a radio station if we drove past the tower slowly. The pillow on my seat kept the broken spring out of my ass. Whenever he would apply the brakes I would subconsciously look for something “soft” to hit. It was the kind of car I would later term “a beater”. But right now it was a cream puff with character.

We passed several liquor stores as we drove around. We ended up on the beach near Ventnor. Brad had a valid ID and could’ve gotten us some booze, but we didn’t dare risk going back to camp with alcohol on our breath, so we just drank Snapples. I love their peach soda.

Along about eleven PM, we ended up in the back of the Escort making out. This time it went farther than the simple French-kissing we’d enjoyed outside the cabin. First, Brad tried to put his tongue in my ear, but I jumped and banged my head on the car door window. Wet and ears didn’t go together in my book. So he settled for kissing the side of my neck, which felt really nice. I could feel warm tingles all over me. I could tell he was taking some care not to give me a hickey. I appreciated that.

By and by, I felt Brad’s hand at my back, fumbling through my dress. “What?” I said.