Camp Wah-Nee

During the summer of 1995, I worked at a summer camp located in Torrington, Connecticut. I was hired to be in charge of utilizing lighting for the camp’s productions in their theatre. The theatre I worked in was really dirty and in a mess. I had to spend long hot afternoons cleaning and organizing everything to be ready for the upcoming shows. Most of the campers came from well-to-do families in Long Island, New York. A lot of the counselors that were hired hailed mostly from the UK. I’ve been an Anglophile since my childhood due to being a fan of post-punk bands from across the pond, and I was simply thrilled to be associating with people my age who would share my tastes in music. Some of the counselors shared my enthusiasm for the UK indie bands. Getting hired for this summer job was a great way for me to sober up and detox from all of the smack I had been doing prior. I definitely suffered from physical withdrawals and constipation. In addition, I was able to spend a summer finally in an actual legit sleepaway camp.

My parents never sent me away to summer camp. I did attend day camp in the city I grew up in. The day camp was held at a nearby church located near city hall. Since I wasn’t Christian, I did get a chance to memorize bible verses and learn songs. My father became angry when he found out that I was thinking of converting to Christianity, but luckily that never happened. He had written in his At-A-Glance back in 1982 that he didn’t approve of my interest in this ‘Jesus shit’. I always found it tough at times to relate to my peers who were part of an organized religion. The reason I was unaffiliated was due to my father’s decision of not having me raised into any sort of religion. This was due to him being forced to attend Catholic school and experiencing anti-Semitism there. My paternal grandparents both had Jewish ancestry and my father never wanted me to tell anyone about that nor was I supposed to admit to having anything Jewish despite my very Old Testament last name. I was raised to be appear like your average WASPy child living in Orange County, California. That would fit in well with my mother’s very Gentile ancestry from mainly the UK and Ireland.

When I was working at Camp Wah-Nee, I was on the cusp of turning twenty-three and was still had to do my senior thesis in order to complete my undergraduate studies at NYU. There was a period leading from the fall of 1993 to the spring of 1995 in which I had partaken in both psychedelic and hard drugs. I am particularly amazed looking back three decades ago to realize what a lucky sonofabitch I was to have survived that period after ingesting street drugs. This extra-curricular drug taking was actually part of my thesis project. I wanted to write about being fucked-up and also about how getting into a druggy lifestyle would make me into a self-inflicted pariah for a very long time.I don’t feel boisterous at all about that particular time in my life. I just had to do it for art’s sake, goddammit. I really enjoyed the absolute physical sensations of feeling high as fuck. It was even better knowing how calm and stable I appeared under the influence no matter what I had taken. There clearly was a method to my juvenile madness and it had paid off with me writing really vivid stuff from that period in the mid-90s.

My summer camp experience was very memorable since I got to witness what it would have been like to have been raised Jewish and sharing a similar childhood to my fellow campers. One of the boys in my cabin admitted to me that he was related to Robert Moog of the famed synthesizer company. This was way before I started using Moog apps for my own amateurish experimental sound design stuff. There were definitely some very attractive British ladies working as camp counselors. I do regret not pursuing any of them more aggressively for some nocturnal rendezvouses. One of the ladies I definitely took a fancy to, but my shyness and insecurity took away any courage I might’ve coughed up then. I can’t recall any Jewesses working there at the time. My past karma has always reminded me time and again about the hazards of dating and getting involved with Gentile women. At least I know now to stick with the Jews from now on, especially the ladies I decide to be in a relationship with.

There was a very nice sized lake surrounding our camp site with two small wooden deckings. I would sunbathe there while listening to a local radio station constantly playing the theme song from Friends. The only time I actually saw a lightning bolt up close was from one of the summer thunderstorms that would come by. Lightning would strike the flag pole near the basketball courts and the whole ground would shake from the impact. The camp counselors would watch films on VHS inside the same theatre space I worked in. I can recall seeing films mostly from the year before on video like Forrest Gump, The Shawshank Redemption, and Dumb and Dumber. The British counselors loved going in town to a local pub to get pissed. I can recall some of the lads pressuring me to sexually assault some of the female counselors as we sped rapidly down bumpy roads in the middle of the night.

In addition, I was able to visit New York City briefly to check up on my favorite music stores and reconnect with friends. There was one particular time when I had returned from taking a Metro North train from Grand Central Station and there was no staff member available to pick me up from the station and transport me back to the camp site. This was because everyone from the camp had gone on a long field trip. So, after waiting for a while and receiving an obscene phone call from a local pervert on a nearby pay phone, the local police picked me up and dropped me off at a local homeless shelter where I ended up sleeping for the night. My only regrets from working at that camp was not keeping in touch with some of the Brits I became friendly with. After my summer job ended, I went back to New York City basically homeless since I had no set residence. This period was actually a trial period for what being destitute means when I had nobody in my family who was willing to help me out boarding costs. Later on that fall, I moved to the borough of Brooklyn for the very first time while simultaneously interning at Fangoria magazine and working at the former Barnes & Noble located at Astor Place. I recently went on the official website for Camp Wah-Nee and was pleasantly surprised to know the camp is still in operation and managed by the same people. It was a memorable experience from a definite transitory period in my twenties, and I’m forever grateful that I was hired to basically detox from my dabbling in a junkie lifestyle.