6
In the number 2 Cabin bathroom Zach and I are pressed up against each other, Zach sitting on the sink as I push toward him. I am trying to get used to his tongue in my mouth. The first time it happened he said, This is how you French kiss, and then licked my lips with his tongue.
At the time, I wondered who it was that taught him.
I get down on my knees. I take him in my mouth. I have read that this is something that men like. It makes me nervous when Zach does it to me, but I feel in control when I do it to him, and this much I know I like. I don’t like doing it for itself.
Jesus, he whispers, and I pinch him. The other kids in the cabin are supposed to be asleep. I had finished my bed check when I heard the door open, not even the sound of the door itself but the whisper of the air moved by its opening. Days ago I had greased the hinges and oiled the spring. For him,
He jumps against me when I pinch him, knees knocking my chest. He smells like warm bread down here, if you rubbed it with salt. I take advantage of my swimming lessons, I breathe through my nose and take him in my throat. He squeezes my shoulders, starts pounding lightly and then harder. His legs shake.
What’s that on your shoulder, Eric B. asks me the next morning on my way back from the shower. I look back to see, on my skin, five purple dots in a row. I got punched, I say.
Eric B. grins. Yeah.
7
When you say Excelsis, you need to land hard on all three syllables. Egg. Shell. Cease. Got it? Egg — Shell — Cease. Excelsis. Put it together. Now, Do-ho Na-ha No-beese, In-Egg-Shell-Cease Day-Oh. Ready?
The baton flicks up. And then down.
We have been working on this piece for three days. We rehearse two hours in the morning and two in the afternoon. This is my first summer camp. Usually, camp means a cottage my family rents, where we drive up and swim more or less continuously. Zach’s family has one on Lake Sebago, a log cabin with a screened-in porch and a dock, built by his architect family. Here, we have the rehearsal building, the canteen where the food is served, the two cabins, with another half cabin for Eric’s wife, Leanne, and her new baby, a big-headed round ball of a boy who is so quiet he makes me afraid. Ralph, Eric ’s foster son, stays in Cabin I with Big Eric.
Leanne is a giantess, taller than Eric, who is tall. Each of her breasts right now seems as big around as my head. She is the camp nurse, a title that fits as she is always breast-feeding her new baby. The half cabin, her tiny domain, is the last one in the row of buildings going down to the dock and the lakefront. There are no near neighbors. Watching her come and go, it seems there should be hidden compartments to accommodate her bulk.
Dona Nobis. This whole phrase, it means thank you lord for your gift. It is sung to celebrate Jesus. Thank you Lord for your gift, all thanks be to God. Noble gift, all thanks be to God above all others. Big Eric tells us the meanings of the words, because he insists it will help us sing. I like it better when I don’t know the meanings. When the word is empty and I fill it like a glass. Knowing what they mean takes away some of my courage.
We sing for a half hour past the rehearsal end. The altos have finally adapted, the sopranos are holding themselves back, the second sopranos support us both through the gap left for them now. Big Eric sets his wand down after the end is reached for the fifth time that afternoon. He wipes sweat off his forehead and smiles at us and says, You’re done. Come back for dinner, at six.
Back in my cabin my sweat dries in the cool air coming off the lake. I think about writing to my family. I wouldn’t know what to say. Last night, Big Eric broke up a Dungeons & Dragons game I’d been leading for the Cabin 2 boys, so they wouldn’t feel so left out by the nightly naked story hour. But then Peter and Zach had wanted to play, and so Big Eric came up and shut it down and took them back to Cabin 1. I look over the interrupted game story, and then put it away. I take out a book of Greek mythology I stole from the town library. The myths are occasionally checked by a pencil, as if this were a catalog, and someone had gone along marking what they wished to buy. I read until the dinner bell, dreading what Big Eric will say. When I go to dinner with my book, Big Eric looks at it. Greeks, he says. Wise men, the Greeks. He smiles and I shut the book, slip it under my thigh on the bench. At dinner, Big Eric announces that cliques are forbidden in the choir, and that, until further notice, the D&D games would be suspended. I wonder about naked story hour.
After dinner, I take my sketch pad down to the edge of the water, where I can look at the late-summer sun still afternoon-bright at six-thirty in the evening. I draw two eyes there on the page. I can never decide easily whether to draw the eyes as white eyes or Asian ones. My eyes are white eyes, though slanted slightly, but with the white-boy eyelids. The irises have green centers and brown edges. Split through the middle.
I look at my two eyes there on the page. I begin to draw hair, then fill in the face shape, put in lines for the neck. I taught myself to draw by tracing comics, so I draw smooth-lined broad-shouldered men and women of enormous cleavage, supported by powerful, tiny waists and long, muscled legs. I always wait for the eyes to tell me who they are, so I can know who I am drawing. I decide I am drawing my favorite character from D&D, a sorceress I’ve named Tammamo, for my long-ago great-grandmother. I draw a heart-shaped face atop a long beautiful body, with flowing red hair past her waist that rises behind her like fire in a storm wind. I try to make her look like one of my grandfather’s missing sisters.
Who are you drawing?’ Behind me stands Big Eric.
A character of mine, from D&D. As I say this, I feel a change come over me, like a direction change in the wind. All my air is now coming from another direction.
You’re very good. She looks scary.
She’s not supposed to. I guess I’m not that good.
I look up at him. He is a tall man, he does carpentry. His round-rimmed gold-framed glasses gives him an owlish demeanor, though not the wise owl but the startled one. When the owl blinks around trying to see.
I’m not targeting you, he says.
All right. If you say so.
They tell me you are the Dungeon Master. What does that mean?
It means I am in charge of the game rules. I have the maps, I tell them who the enemies are, and I monitor the plays, to make sure the dice are rolled and everyone gets a turn. And I make up the stories.
I turn back to my drawing. I draw Tammamo wearing a white buckskin fringe bikini and her power gem rests on a headdress that rides atop her hair. Her boots are thigh-high.
I say, Adam’s a dungeon master too. A good one. Zach hates it. Merle or Luke can be good if they don’t get bored. It’s not just me.
Big Eric bends down. All right then, he says. Just remember, some of these boys are not as sophisticated as you. I don’t want them feeling left out, and I don’t want them complaining to their parents. If someone wants to play I want you to find them a way. All right?
Yep.
When I finish my drawing, the light is nearly gone, and Tammamo’s hands each hold a ball of fire-lightning. I see her leap into the wind’s wide arms, her hair a torch, see her laugh as she rides the night. Before she fell in love, I think, she would have been mad with grief, wanting love. How would she have fallen in love with her husband? Was she preparing to destroy him and fell for him instead?