HAPPY CAMPERS

I feel like I’m beginning to get the hang of being at camp. The mornings are early—for me, at least—and working six days a week is a grind, even with all the art and goodwill and natural beauty of the Berkshires foothills. Last Friday was especially strange because it was the Fourth of July, and there was virtually no observance here at camp.

Now, I’m in no mood to celebrate the country. I’ve never been much of a patriot, and now, even less so considering that every marginalized group is heavily under attack by the people who purport to be our leaders. For me, the fourth has always been significant in two ways: one, it’s my niece Alexandra’s birthday. These days, Alex and her sister Verida are living overseas. Alex keeps having babies—none of whom I’ve met so far, since we’re almost never visiting my sister at the same time. The other significance is that the fourth is the perfect time to cook out with family and friends and just relax into the joy and companionship of Blackness.

Since Chef Maya from Black Roux Culinary Collective in New Orleans is camp chef here, I hoped there’d be some sort of culinary celebration—by which I just mean that hotdogs aand/or, but that wasn’t the case. For one thing, Maya’s kitchen resources are spread pretty thin, and she’s working with a miniscule budget. That night, the camp threw a bonfire on the outskirts of campus and the kids were given surprisingly high-quality marshmallows to roast. Kechi and I walked Karate down there and hung around for a few minutes. I didn’t stay any longer because of my own baggage—I had this horrible incident when I was nine where on a Boy Scout camping trip, I ate too many marshmallows, had an allergy attack from the wood smoke and got so messily sick that my dad had to drive out to Patapsco State Park bundle me into the back of our station wagon like a scarecrow made of shame. Rough stuff. So instead of reliving that night of infamy, we headed back to the cabin and went to bed early—forgetting about the weekly all-staff meeting.

I also, thank God, found a place to get my hair cut! There don’t seem to be any Black barbershops here in New Milford, which is a little maddening, but I found one in town with Black barbers who do know how to cut fades. I freshed up my mohawk, and while it’s a little different, I’m happy with it. It’ll at least do to keep it this way til the end of the summer, at which point I’ might just fully shave my head in honor of the transition from Louisiana life to life in Chicago. I considered doing it already, if I’m being honest, since we’ve already left the state, but this summer feels like a great pause in which we are living without a real homebase, preparing for this great next step.

Tonight is my long night. On Mondays, camp starts an hour later, but this is also the day I have Guidance Assist from 6 to 10 at one of the bunks for the oldest male campers. It’s not a bad setup. I like the kids, I like the surroundings, and the only shitty part is that the bunk has no good seating for me, so I have to bring my own chair. Kechi and I bought a pair of them at Walmart when we got here since we had no room to bring our fantastic folding camp chairs from home. These ones are not as good, and I don’t regret the fact that we’ll have to leave them behind when we’re done here.

It's also low-key impossible to get any real work done with eight or nine teenagers pounding up and down the rickety stairs, practicing drumming on a set of pads that some fucking maniac gifted the bunk and arguing about video games I’ve never heard of. (I love games but wouldn’t consider myself a gamer as I don’t tend to have a lot of time for pure consumption. I worry a little about what life will be like in Chicago when I have even less time.)

Kechi and I were told we were getting an air conditioner installed in our cabin, which was fantastic news—but something told me not to take it seriously until it happened. In the end, they wound up installing a ceiling fan instead, which works great. The weather here is pretty mercurial. There are times when the temperature gets into the fifties overnight, which scandalizes my New Orleans sensibilities. They are good breaks from the worst of the heat, though, so the fluctuations are working for me.

Oh, and I almost forgot the part where my pretty-much brand-new phone died on me and I had to get it repaired (for free) at the Apple Store in Danbury. It was kind of refreshing to be without a phone for several days, but it was also fucking maddening, and having to find alternative ways of doing business and communicating (and using the goddamn internet, because the wifi here is garbage) caused a lot of frustration. All that’s resolved now, though, and this very day, Kechi and I looked at another Chicago apartment. I still don’t think we’ve found The One, but I don’t want to make too much of it. There will come a time when I will be down to move into whatever shoebox we can call ours so that we have a place to land when we get out of here.

I wish I could talk more about novel work. I’ll probably share some sections this week. I’ve got this new character I’m threading in that requires me to complete surgery on all the chapters I already had as well as generating new material for her plot, and the work is fascinating. For one thing, this character switched genders on me almost as soon as she had a name. The more I write about her, the more I like her. She reminds me of a lot of folks I knew in New Orleans, both in and outside the comedy scene. I hope she makes it through okay, but, I dunno. She’s in serious serious trouble—and even I’m not sure quite how bad it is for her yet. (It’s bad.)