The alarm goes off.   I know I’ve got to get up, but I’d rather not.  I’m hungover.  I’ve only had three hours sleep.  I’m not ready.  I’m just not ready for today.  I manage to find what feels like the floor, remember how to work the doorknob and make my way downstairs to the coffeepot.  I don’t even stop in the bathroom.  This is the only way I will make through.

My mother is waiting for me.  She has that tough-gal/waitresses/gun moll look on her face that only suburban mothers are capable of.

“Rough night, sunshine,” she says?

I don’t need hard questions like this.  This is a very important day today.  I’ve already gotten it off to a bad start.  Last night I went out with my friends.  We had graduated high school a month earlier. It would be the last time we would see each other for two months.  It was time to par-tay.  We found a frat party.  Quarter beers and quarter shots of bourbon.  Even then, by the end of the night I was borrowing money.

“I said,” my mother pointedly repeats, “Rough Night, Sunshine?”

“Yeah, well, whatever.”

I don’t even have the energy it takes to dodge around her to the coffeepot.  Again, she fixes me with the stare.  She turns and pours me a cup of coffee.

“You should look at your face,” she says.  “Go upstairs.”

I’m a zombie, so I must do as she says.  I take the stairs as best I can.  I flick on the bathroom light and… oh god… this couldn’t have happened.  It just couldn’t have happened.  I don’t remember this.  You’d think I would have remembered something like this.

The left side of my cheek is one big scrape.  Huge.

In two hours, the head of the Camp WitcheeWatcheeWugWug, a seventy-year-old Jewish man nicknamed Bellow, will be coming to pick me up.  In two hours I will be on my way to a summer camp in the Adirondacks to start my career as a camp counselor.

Though the smog of my hangover, I become painfully aware of the concept of action and consequence.

I don’t remember how I’d heard about the job.   Maybe my high-school drama teacher.  Maybe my mother.  The job was ostensibly to be a camp counselor.  I had no interest in that.  What hooked me was the chance to DIRECT.  I would be the drama teacher. I would put on the camp show. This would be the start.  I knew that this would not be my big break, but it would make a great anecdote on Merv Griffin, Mike Douglas or Dinah Shore.  I was seventeen and hungry.

Bellow sat across from in the lobby lounge chairs of the Jewish Community Center.  I’m not Jewish and, suburban boy that I am, had just recently realized that, besides people whose skin was a different color than mine there were also people who did not believe in Jesus.  It made me nervous.  I couldn’t quite get it.

“THE SOUND OF MUSIC!,” Bellow bellowed. 

Bellow looked like Swify Lazar doing an impersonation of Don Rickle’s doing Eddie Murphy’s Gumby.

“THE SOUND OF MUSIC…IT HAS A LOT OF KIDS!  THERE’S…. KIDS…MANY KIDS.  WE NEED A SHOW THAT HAS A LOT OF KIDS BECAUSE IT’S A SUMMER CAMP FOR KIDS!”  God, but the man was loud.

“Well…” I started, “I was thinking about that, and I thought that maybe Oliver would be a good play.  There’s a lot of kids in that.”

“BUT THE SOUND OF MUSIC…THERE’S SO MANY OF THEM.  THERE’S THE WHOLE FAMILY.  KIDS!”

“Yes, I know,” I said patiently.  I was not going to let this guy kick me, Budding WunderKind, around.  Plus, I hated The Sound of Music.  I hated most musicals.  Oliver especially.  But this was work.  This was the start of my career.  “There’s more kids in Oliver.  Plus there’s less adult parts.”  SCORE!

“HUM…”, he thought about this.  “I GUESS YOUR RIGHT!  OLIVER…” he pondered for a moment, “OLIVER IS A GOOD SHOW.  ALL RIGHT.  OLIVER!”

Looking back, The Sound of Music fixation seems only natural coming from a Jewish man who’d lived through World War II.

If it had only been Bellow and me driving to camp, it wouldn’t have been as bad.  Perhaps he would have put his arm around me and told me stories of his misspent youth.  Perhaps we might have bonded over my adolescent stupidity.  He might have told me things that would have cut short my already flowering alcoholism.  As it was, we had to pick up six-year-old Kevin.

The cut off age at the camp was seven.  By the looks and location of Kevin’s house, it must not have been very hard to bypass probable state law to get him into Camp WitcheeWatcheeWugWug.  Kevin’s parents had also requested that, due to his age, Bellow drive him personally up to camp.  They also planned a trip to Europe that would prevent them from taking him there themselves. 

His parents looked like models in their semi-formal sportswear.  They barely broke a sweat pushing him kicking and screaming into the front seat of Bellow’s car.

If Bellow barely reacted to my mangled cheek, he was equally unmoved by the emotional abuse that these perfect parents inflicted on this child.  There were no hugs, no kisses, no reassurances that everything would be all right.  There was very little talking, as I remember it. Very little of anything.  It was a SWAT maneuver.  It was as if the deprogrammers were giving this kid back to the cult.

I was both annoyed and grateful to be relegated to the back seat.

We sped off to Camp WitcheeWatcheeWugWug.  Kevin stopped crying about an hour later.

At camp, I was given my tent assignment.  I was with seven and eight-year-olds.  And Kevin.

For the most part, things went fairly smoothly.  I had written an eight-page version of Oliver to conform to the twenty-minute time slot the camp play had been allotted.  The play was at the mid-point of camp on Parent’s Day.  It was progressing well, despite a temperamental Bill Sykes who came to rehearsal late and unprepared.  I took care of that by threatening to give his part to someone else.

The day-to-day stuff was fairly mundane.  I wasn’t the best counselor, but the boys and I had fun playing late seventies Free Games.  The hardest part was the seven-year-old who would shit his pants and deny that it had happened.  And Kevin. 

Kevin had gotten it into his head that, since I’d driven up with him, that I must be “the help.”  Kevin was always the last at everything.  Kevin did not listen.  Kevin was brazenly a pain in the ass.  But I grit my teeth and dealt with him as calmly as possible.  Though the other boys didn’t much care for him, he had the best “stuff.”  Candy, comic books you name it.  It came in a steady stream from his parents, like Catholics at a confessional.  We can’t give you love, but we can give you plenty of things that will make others act as if they love you.  No matter how much I romped and played with the boys, no matter how many knees I kissed and bandaged, no matter how much they told me I was fun, at the end of the day it was all about candy and comic books.  Thus goes the hierarchy.

The night-to-night stuff was even more mundane.  Drinking, drinking and more drinking.  I had thankfully learned my lesson and sworn off bourbon for the duration of camp.  There were, to my knowledge, no more un-remember incidents.

Parent’s Day came and I couldn’t have been more thrilled.  Not only would I present a mini-masterpiece to what I now knew would be actual New York Theater People, but this camp gig was half over.  My own parent’s were coming up, as well, plus my middle sister who told me she’d bring me some great weed.

The play went off remarkably well, but no offers resulted from it.  Mike, Merv and Dinah would all comment on how ironic that was.  My sister brought me some very nice Thai stick, which I shared, with some of the other counselors that night.

Kevin’s parents, not surprisingly, did not show.

The next several days, Kevin’s behavior deteriorated.  He was close to uncontrollable.  Before Parent’s Day, I could, after ten minutes of intense negotiation/pleading, finally budge him to the shower, to dinner, to bed.  Now, it was impossible.  Even the other kids were getting tired of it.

It all broke on laundry day.

I had been told to gather and sort all the dirty laundry for pick up by 2:00pm.  My co-counselor was nowhere to be found.  Kevin was having a great time kicking the sorted piles all over the cabin.  The other boys were fairly co-operative until it became obvious that I was losing this battle.  Once the tide turned, they melded all the piles into one big pile and proceeded to jump over it and into it.  It was 1:45pm. I was getting near the snapping point. 

The harshest punishment we were allowed to dish out was to make the kids sit quietly on their beds.  In my best authoritarian voice, I commanded “Get On Your Beds…NOW!”  Five out of eight scampered to their beds.  I stared down another ones.

With even greater force and the help of my thespian trained, diaphragmatic voice, I thought of my father and let loose again.  “I…SAID…NOW!”  Number Seven looked at me like I was the anti-Christ, which I silently thanked him for.  He moved cautiously to his bed.  That left Kevin.

Kevin barely flinched.  He stopped, looked at me, turned around and leapt away from me over the pile of clothes.  He turned again and leapt over the pile towards me.  As he lay at my feet, I remember wanting to hit him.  I remember the rage that I was feeling.  More than anything, I wanted to do physical damage to this child.  I had a moment’s sympathy for his parents.  I remember quickly playing through the outcome giving this kid a good whack.  It would be a bad move.  I needed him on the bed in one piece.

I tried to put on my happy, calm face and bent down to pick him up.

“O-o-o-o-kay, Kevin,” I chortled forcibly, “Le-e-e-e-t’s just cut this stuff out and get on your bed.”

I picked him up and tried to make a game out of it, bouncing and jostling over to the bed.  It seemed like he was responding to it, to the physical contact, to someone actually making him stop behaving like the spoiled brat I’d come to know him as.  I got him to his bed and held him over it to a moment.

“Down…you…GO,” I squealed!  I dropped him on the bed.

He started to giggle.

Later that day, I started feeling weird.  I had the feeling that people were looking at me.  I was being talked about.  Something was up and it was not good.

Kevin’s sister came up to me.  She was 11 and had come up with a friend with the rest of the camp population.

“Why did you try to hurt my brother,” she asked directly.

I was stunned.

“Wh-wh-at?!”

“My brother said you tried to hurt him.  You threw him on his bed.  You’re soo lucky he’s not hurt.”

I looked into her eyes.  They were bright and dull at the same time.  There was a cruel, business-like pleasure in them.  I did not see concern in her eyes, only outcome.

“I-I-I…dropped him on the bed,” I stammered.  “I wasn’t trying to hurt him. I…”

She turned and left.

My co-counselor showed up.

“What the hell happened?”

I went over the story with him.  I was too shaken to ask where the hell he had been. 

“That sucks.  That kid Kevin, man,” he shook his head and trailed off.  He looked at me as if to say something and left.

The camp’s assistant director came purposefully striding up.

“Come with me,” she barked.  “Bellow would like to talk to you.”  Her tone, now that I had the perceived facts, told me that I was a child beater and a scumbag.  I was not fit to walk with her.

“YOU CAN’T HIT CHILDREN!,” Bellow bellowed.  “THEY’RE KIDS!  THEY COME TO THIS CAMP TO HAVE A GOOD TIME.  YOU CAN’T HIT THEM!  DO YOU THINK THAT PARENT’S WANT TO SEND THEIR KIDS TO A SUMMER CAMP WHRE THEY ARE BEATEN?  NO, THEY DON’T.  THEY WANT TO KNOW THAT THEIR KIDS ARE SAFE!  SAFE, NOT BEATEN!”

I went over the events with Bellow and the assistant director.  I had not hit Kevin, and any of the other kids would tell them that.  I had not thrown Kevin I had dropped him and after dropping him on his bed, he had giggled.  Again, any of the kids in the cabin would tell him that. 

As he listened, I felt Bellow understood.  The assistant director was unimpressed.

“WELL,” he said after a long pause, “WE CAN’T KEEP YOU HERE.”

“What!,” I gulped.

“WHETHER IT HAPPENED OR DIDN’T HAPPEN.  WE CAN’T HAVE YOU HERE.  PARENTS ARE GOING TO FIND OUT ABOUT THIS AND THAT’S BAD ENOUGH AND TO KEEP YOU HERE WOULD BE WORSE.  WE’LL PAY YOU UNTIL THE END OF CAMP.  YOU LEAVE TODAY.”

There was sadness in his voice, but I couldn’t place its focus.

“But I didn’t do anything!  I didn’t hurt him!  I didn’t try to hurt him!  Ask the other kids! They’ll tell you.  I was trying…”

“BE THAT AS IT MAY,” he said, “AS I TOLD YOU, WE CAN’T KEEP YOU HERE.  PACK YOUR STUFF AND PLEASE GO AS SOON AS YOU CAN.”

“So it doesn’t matter what really happened?”  I looked in his eyes.

The assistant director led me out of Bellow’s office and to my cabin.  The kids were all sitting quietly on their bunks when I walked in.  Kevin was looking preternaturally angelic and pleased with himself.  The other kids looked at me curiously.

I threw my stuff into my backpack without saying anything.  My co-counselor sat brooding.  I’m sure he was thinking about dealing with these kids on his own.

I wish I had it in me to make an impassioned speech.  To let these kids know precisely why I was leaving and how it happened.  About hierarchy, class and how perception always won out over the truth.  Instead, I picked up my copy of Atlas Shrugged of the bed and said, “Bye, guys.”

At the gate, Bellow gave me my pay in cash.

“I’LL DRIVE YOU TO THE BUS STATION.  WE’LL BUY YOU A TICKET HOME.”

“No thanks,” I said.  “I’ll hitch.”

“BUT YOUR PARENTS!”

I walked out the gate and down to the main road and stuck my thumb out.  It was six o’ clock and I didn’t get very far.  The ride let me off at a motel.  I went to the roadside place next to it, got a cheeseburger, a pint of bourbon and a six-pack of beer and went back to my room.  I smoke my sister’s weed and drank until I passed out.