Camp Westmont, 1988
Late at night while the counselors slept, boys
from Iroquois or Mohawk would sneak
through the door of the bunk to make out
our faces in the dark, wake girls
like Stephanie or April—girls who wore
eyeliner to bed, who were sure to let them
go most of the way—slip one hand down
her sweatpants, and another over her bra
until the stacked beds moaned with rust-songs
of tongues and hormones. The inevitable
look-out friend, bored extra boy with time to kill,
would steal into the back room and rummage blind
through cubbies to grab any pair of panties by feel
so he could run them up our flagpole on the return trip,
because this was camp, where all underwear
came carefully labeled in June by mothers
who sewed tiny, printed tags or scrawled proudly
with black laundry marker on each elastic waistband
before we boarded the coach bus that brought us
to outer Pennsylvania for clean air and lessons
in softball or backstroke in the brackish lake
with the faux-Indian name, for instruction
in tennis and lanyard weaving, and canteen
socials with forced square dancing.
That was the summer we shaved our legs
in a group circle on the floor, drummed
the Barbasol from our pink Daisy razors
into coffee cans of water and discussed
finger-fucking, hymen-breaking, the best
techniques for hand jobs. At thirteen,
the worst humiliation was not getting caught
with hickeys in the shape of his initials
on your stomach, or your bunkmate
stirring in the middle of the night
from heavy breathing and singing springs,
but rather, waking to the static rendition
of Taps on the loudspeaker, stumbling out
the door in a crooked line of hooded girls
to see a patterned splotch of pink or lavender
waving against the early-morning sky, too high
to seem familiar, flowered flagpole topper,
the pair’s slow-squeaking journey down
as the camp director with the whistle around her neck
pulls the rope, unclips the fabric scrap, checks
the waistband and carefully calls out your name
so you can slink to the center of the circle
and claim them, tiny badge of shame
you ball in your fist and hold over your heart
through the pledge of allegiance, wishing
all panties were as anonymous as the boy
who had woken you the night before
by plunking his hand on your blanketed thigh,
whose kisses were simultaneously like
chewing gum and fishing the lake bottom,
who would never think to look in your panties
for a name to whisper in the dark.
Originally
appeared in Gargoyle.