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(Continued from CHECKS AND BALANCES)
Camp.
When I was 6 ½ years old, my panicked mother and father hastily decided to cure their son’s effeminate nature by sending him to a place where the prevailing ‘drill and kill’ child psychology was celebrated with the pomp and circumstance the Soviet military reserves for those hideous Victory Day celebrations.
In my all-boy, ‘military style’ camp, we were up before dawn each day and put through a vigorous regimen of terrifying team sports, tasteless meals, and tuneless camp songs, cheers and chants. Hoping I would turn into the macho, sports-minded son they always wanted, my parents were greatly disappointed to learn that instead of excelling in baseball, basketball, or hockey as they had hoped, I excelled in…DRUM ROLL PLEASE…the theater program. After all, what honest-to-goodness gay boy goes to camp and bothers to excel at some boring sport when the glitter and glamour of footlights, costumes, and stage makeup beckon? I must say that despite my lack of ‘professional’ experience, I was boffo in the camp productions of MY FAIR LADY, HELLO DOLLY and THE SOUND OF MUSIC.
Now you may be asking yourself why an all-boy, ‘military style’ sports camp would care to stage a play at all, let alone a camp play that calls for a knocked-out, blood and guts performance by it’s presumably female lead. Honestly… I have no clue. I can only guess that our Darth Vader-esque camp director possessed a maniacal zeal to stamp out our attraction to anything considered ‘theatrical.’ Each summer he would choose a play so inappropriate, humiliating and in his words ‘fruity’ that any lad stupid enough to audition would surely curl up and die before the opening night. What Camp Director Darth hadn’t counted on was the will and determination of a theater-obsessed gay boy with stars in his eyes and hot glue gun in his hand.
(To Be Continued)
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