8243/21162
Richard and Marina mentioned Fort Bragg in one of their recent podcasts, a city in Northern California with a military base in it and I was transported back to 1986 when I worked on a summer camp in the Redwood forests. Fort Bragg was the nearest place to go to on our rare days off. We'd hop on the train that ran through the camp and that would take us there.
I don't remember loads about it, but one very specific memory (or rather lack of one) popped into my head at the mention of the place. A few of us would take the day off together and then stay overnight in a motel, drinking and eating pizza and (for me at least) failing to snog anyone. I don't know if we all stayed in one room, but maybe- we had no money. I was a very naive 18 year old (I turned 19 whilst I was working there) and whilst the others smoked substances that might have been marijuana, I was too scared and uncool so made some lame excuse about not liking smoking. But I drank beer and I certainly got drunk - the trick we'd learned from the Americans was to cut an opening at the bottom of the can and then open the ring pull and the whole beer would slide down your throat in one.
I don't remember much about the experience. There was some joke about a vaginal douche being given to one of the English lad as a present. He didn't know what it was and everyone laughed at him. Including me. Even though I didn't know what it was either.
This summer was full of incident and adventure - including there being a huge fire in the camp on the final day (
I wrote about that recently) and more excitingly me getting a blow job (though I still left America with my virginity firmly in tact and I'd hold on to it for another 7 or 8 months. Because it was my special gift). Literally one blow job. In 3 months.
I don't remember any exciting incidents from the Fort Bragg overnights. I just remember the douche. It's good to learn a new word.
My experience at the camp was a rollercoaster. I had always been a pretty good boy and in the first session I won best cabin leader and the activity I was in charge of, the Jungle Gym won best activity and I was promoted to tribe chief and put in charge of four cabins of 6 year olds. But the kids in the later sessions were more challenging and I was not qualified in any way to be in charge and things went badly and I got into hot water for satirising the camp leaders at the gang show and I was quickly demoted again and then got into trouble (rightly) for lightly slapping a kid who was trying to push in in the lunch queue (he was being a dick to be fair) and I also went on a overnight sleepout in the woods and a few of the kids I was looking after fell down what was essentially a cliff (no fatalities. I nearly got sent home, but saw the whole thing through, though now being a bit of a camp bad boy. Or at least a camp idiot.
At the end of the whole thing I had asked for a reference from the guy in charge of the camp, but I didn't get one. I had made a couple of mistakes, but it was at least partly his fault for putting someone so inexperienced in a difficult position (it was unusually for America a camp that was for kids from the inner city, not privileged kids from rich backgrounds and I was not equipped to deal with the challenges). Anyway one of my fellow Europeans told me that one of the reasons that the management had turned against me so much was because when I'd been on an overnight in Fort Bragg I had caused a bit of trouble by dressing up in a sheet and running round the motel car park pretending to be a ghost.
You might think that sounds like the kind of thing that I would do and you might also think that that isn't too bad a thing to do. But I had absolutely no memory of doing anything like that and am 99% certain that I didn't leave the pizza, beer and douche room. Was it just a story that got added to my legend of incompetence and stupidity or did it actually happen and I was so drunk that I had no memory of it?
I am pretty sure that this wasn't me. I was actually by far one of the least wild camp counsellors in the place. But now when I hear the words Fort Bragg I think about the time that I possibly ran around a motel dressed up like a ghost and was annoying enough for a complaint to get back to camp management.
Hey, I am 99% certain it wasn't me and that I've been confused with someone who was brave enough to take some drugs, but it makes me sound like I wasn't a totally boring virgin who was too scared to smoke something that probably wasn't even marijuana, so I'll take it.
I am like an Animal House legend.
I should probably write about that summer in more detail at some point. It's incredible how so much adventure was packed into a few short months and how that small portion of my life feels like a much bigger chunk of my time than it actually was.
