First Camp Birthday

One thing I've noticed about camp life is that, even though this particular camp is going to keep even the smartest little sleep-awayers around for at least the next five years, social groups and hierarchies managed to solidify during the first month. No one, it seems, wanted to be left sitting alone in the cafeteria. It's foremost because of that "band together or die" impulse, I believe, that I ended up spending my first birthday at camp having the best party I'd had since the sixth grade (the year my mom let us all make personal pizzas and bought arts and crafts nonsense so we could hot-glue our own christmas ornaments). And perhaps it's that same impulse, kicked into overdrive within me, that left me crying at the end of the evening, wrapped in an afghan amongst the ruins of my kingdom, and being comforted by an unfortunately gassy friend.

But first, the good parts. There's something pretty presumptuous about throwing yourself a birthday party, and in the beginning that wasn't really what I set out to do. One of the things I was quite afraid of before I left for camp, however, was that I wouldn't have made any friends during the early months and would have to spend my birthday alone. Probably with a large "23" candle stuck in a cupcake, and with my face painted like a sad clown, to really drive home the patheticness of my situation. In my sad little daydream, I don't even have enough money to hire an out-of-work velvet-Elvis painter to immortalize the moment.

So, to prevent that particular worst-case scenario, I took a friend's comment about wanting to play Trivial Pursuit and turned it into an excuse to invite people over on my birthday. This would have probably gone nowhere, except that I also decided to use THE INTERNET to get out my message. Social networking sites + campers' desire to drink alcohol and prove to others that they are smart = instant birthday celebration.

And thus, to my surprise, nearly everyone I invited showed up at my house at the right time. And they came bearing gifts, of cake and alcohol and DVDs and books, everything my heart could desire. And they, with joy or sadness, put on the cone-shaped birthday hats that were clearly made for child-sized heads. And even though I didn't even buy the Trivial Pursuit game, we still played games that gave us plenty of reason to make fun of each other. "Taboo!" is surprisingly difficult for international campers, and the game's buzzer is pretty handy for making tasteless taser jokes.

At the end, though, I probably invited one camper too many, because in the future I will be subjecting one less poor single man to my nervous chatter and self-deprecating humor than I was just a few days before. I'm pretty sure my "let's give everyone cake!" impulse should not have won out against my "it's a bad idea to expect a virtual stranger to meet all your friends!" impulse. But I mean, come on, CAKE.

The bad part about that was that it was bad, and has led like a lot of my unfortunate post-"let's maybe be friends except not" conversations to a discussion wherein a friend tries to tell me that the boy in question is an insensitive asshole, and I try to convince the friend that they are not and really, I would have acted the same way in their position. The good part about it, in a backwards sort of way, is that it's added to my collection of "surreal humor in breaking-it-off" stories.

The last of these was the immortal time in which, two summers ago, a boy decided we should stop dating while we were sitting in front of an ornate and ugly bronze fountain. While we were eating ice cream and discussing how he didn't like me, a playful Laborador had been splashing around in the fountain. The dog's crowning move was to jump up into the air into a thick stream of water (coming out, I think, from the god Neptune's raised horn) and yap up jawfuls of water before he landed back in the fountain's pool. Then, another jump, another yapful of water, and so on.

It was pretty hard to focus completely on being broken up with with that display going on in the background, but I tried to keep my focus on the game at hand. Just about at the time when I was deciding whether or not to ask why, exactly, he didn't like me, the dog jumped out of the fountain, ran back to its owner, and proceeded to vomit up a few gallons of fountain water at his feet. You and me both, I thought, but to be honest I think the dog probably had more serious problems.

The birthday break-off doesn't quite compare to that gem. But picture this scene, if you will.
I am curled up on a futon couch, hiding my head under an afghan. About the room are cake crumbs, corona bottles, sticky plastic cups, popcorn kernels, and a DVD of "Astroboy" cartoons. Next to me on the couch is a girl trying to comfort me, patting me on the leg and telling me that men are shit and I am champagne, except without slipping into trite and humor-bereft phrases (unlike me! b-bam! ). Intersperced in this, from time to time, is the sound of flatulence, and occasionally, from my comforter, the statement "I can't stop farting".

How could, in the end, such a life be bad?