PART FIVE

Hey,
I really miss you all. What have I been up to since I last wrote? Well, after two hours of serious soul-searching at the lake yesterday afternoon, I found Stacy and Josh in the dining hall. In keeping with the Mardi Gras theme, shrimp gumbo, jambalaya and cornbread were on the menu. In the buffet line, I stood next to a guy who was so manly he made the Brawny towel dude look like Andy Dick. On his back was a woman of similar age — his partner or wife I assume. She was pretending to be his daughter, exhibiting the characteristics of a hyperactive seven-year-old girl.
   As was becoming the trend, I put more on my plate than I was able to eat. Josh and Stacy introduced me to Martha, a smiley fifty year old with Farrah Fawcett hair. "Oh don't tell me, you are a bottom, aren't you?" she cooed. "Look at those wonderful baby browns! You wouldn't hurt a fly, would you?" I guess not. I tend to dislike pain, being restrained or getting generally bothered; I would only give someone a sound beating if they stole my stuff. So I suppose I'm a bottom by default.
   During dinner, Josh developed a pronounced facial tic, like his eye was trying to jump off his face. I hadn't noticed it the night before. It seemed to happen every ten seconds and was accompanied by maniacal laughter from Stacy. It seemed kind of uncool until I heard the backstory. You know those invisible-fence collars for dogs, the kind that zap them when they stray too far from the house? Well, Josh was wearing a version of that around his cock and balls. Stacy held the remote control.
   Vincent made his nightly announcements. The abductors of the inflatable dick had cobbled together a ransom note out of letters clipped from a newspaper. (What I wouldn't give for a newspaper to read.) Vincent upped the reward for the dick's return to forty-five cents. The dining room erupted with laughter and applause. Vincent then revealed why the "Takin' it Up the Ass" seminar was a non-starter. (You'll remember that I stumbled in on the class and found twenty people sitting around, just looking at each other.) Apparently some poor bugger had fainted and was carted off to hospital in an ambulance. He had taken too much or not enough of his blood-pressure medication, and as a large object was inserted into a willing ass, he hit the deck faster than Anna Nicole Smith on a fistful of Vicodin.
   There was another special announcement to be made: that day was the one-year anniversary of Peter and Madeleine, who had wed at Leather Camp last year. Applause all around. Peter then grabbed the mic and presented the camp organizers with a plaque conveying heartfelt thanks. It was really touching. The four of them got a two-minute standing ovation. I got a little choked up myself.
   After dinner, everybody filed outside for the stripping competition. Amanda was the first contestant. She did a perfect dance, ending with a headstand, split and precisely executed bridge. The crowd went apeshit. Peter was up next. Despite his formidable bulk, he did some tantalizing leaps and landed in a splits, soliciting oooos and ahhhhs from the audience. Perhaps the biggest crowd-pleaser was a dude named "Pluto's Revenge," a six-foot-four member of the Oink cabin who wore a Mohawk, handlebar moustache and wraparound shades. He threw his lanky frame around for two minutes while wearing a leather thong pouch. During the routine, he launched his sunglasses into the pool. For the finale, he recklessly somersaulted into the shallow end. When he didn't come up for ten seconds, everybody thought the worst. There was uncomfortable silence, then murmuring. But Pluto re-emerged victorious. He was wearing the sunglasses and holding his marble sack high above his head.
    Another routine of note was Samantha and Craig's. As well as being boyfriend and girlfriend, they're both blonde, skinny and tall. Dressed identically in pigtails and Catholic-schoolgirl uniforms, they did a naughty take on a mirrordance, backed by Nine Inch Nails' "Closer (I Wanna Fuck You Like An Animal)." At the end, they writhed on a section of indoor/outdoor carpeting wearing nothing but knee-high boots.
   It's worth mentioning here that out of ten entrants in the stripping contest, six of them chose "I Wanna Fuck You Like an Animal" as accompaniment. After it was played three times in a row, the DJ declared a NIN ceasefire. The other strippers were chagrined. "That's fucked up!" one of them cried behind me. Attention was momentarily deflected from the stripping when a woman in a Mardi Gras mask and front-mounted dildo went down on a fellow audience member. The contest ultimately ended in a tie between Amanda, Pluto's Revenge and an Audrey Hepburn-type performer named "Dancer." Each prize was a bundle of Leather Camp dollars, which could be used at Casino Night or the next day's slave auction.
   Amanda's boyfriend finally came to camp, and she couldn't have been happier about it. They'd only been dating for a month, but she was already wearing a collar that indicated she was beholden to him. A lot of people here are wearing signs of ownership, and they're not all as subtle as a collar. A petite blonde woman is leading around a huge, white, naked, entirely hairless man who has "SLAVE" tattooed over his pubic bone. What's really unusual is that the gentleman seems to lack any identifiable genitalia. In the area where one would normally find a penis, there's something that looks like the tied-up end of a balloon. His testicles are not in evidence. I wondered if he had tucked everything inside, like Samurai warriors did before going into battle. Anyway, he was completely at the mercy of his owner: earlier in the day, I had seen her careening back and forth on a swing while he ate out of a dog bowl ten feet in front of her. At the end of her swing's arc, she would spit, and her saliva would land in her slave's food. She would then flick her cigarette ash into his bowl for him to consume also.
   After the stripping contest, I bumped into Stacy, and we strolled past the torch-lit pony races and down to the pavilion, where Casino Night was being held. Blackjack, poker and roulette were being played at tables all around. Attendees wore differing degrees of fetish wear. I learned how to play blackjack and even came away with hundreds of (fake) dollars.
   Being away from the city's energy made me lethargic, and I was fading fast. In addition to breakfast, lunch and dinner, a "midnight snack" was provided. That night it was cold cuts and rolls. I start talking to Stacy about how she got into the scene. She's really attractive and in her mid-twenties. "I was a sorority girl," she smiled. "That's how I learned to top and bottom. It set me up for being a switch. I didn't know it at the time, but a few years later something was definitely pulling me toward the scene."
   My curiosity was piqued, to say the least. "But you know, I was a great pledge too," she said. "I was all, 'Yes Ma'am, yes Ma'am.' I loved it, even the really evil shit." Apparently, in one hazing ritual the pledges had to strip naked so the seniors could use a permanent marker to circle each girl's fat. That is cold.
   I said good night and went back to the cabin. The remaining two unoccupied beds had been pushed together and an aero bed put over the top. Cliff and Liz were our cabin's only couple. They were in their fifties, and they brought everything but the kitchen sink to camp: a nightlight, two drink coolers, an electric blanket, a collapsible coat rack, a set of those plastic drawers on wheels with all sorts of medical and cosmetic supplies in them. The woman looked like Olive Oyl, and her husband was the spitting image of Mr. Kotter. I lay in bed wondering about their relationship. I wondered if there were vanilla couples where one partner had discovered the scene and the other just kind of went along with it. That's how Olive Oyl seemed. She looked like she wanted to be anywhere else but in this cabin.
   Unlike the night before, I fell asleep immediately. I kept my clothes on and used two towels as auxiliary blankets. It was still fiendishly cold, but at least Dan wasn't making such a racket. I woke up at six on the dot, freezing. I went into the shower room and found that Cliff and Liz had even brought their own massaging shower head. Unbelievable! I took advantage of their creature comfort and hung out under the shower for the best part of an hour. The majority of my cabinmates were still asleep. It was 7:30, and the rain outside was nothing short of torrential. Breakfast wasn't served until nine, but the kitchen staff already had some coffee brewing while they prepared eggs, bacon and oatmeal. I'm sat down at one end of the huge dining hall, the only person there. I started talking to a kitchen staffer who was wearing a David Beckham jersey. I guessed he was English, but was actually from Poland. "I'm from G'dansk," he told me in perfect English. Not only did Stacek nail my country of origin, but he could identify what region I was from by my accent. "What do you think of America?" I asked him. "I much prefer England," he said. "This place is weird." I hoped he had seen other things than camp. "Next week, there will be people here that will be naked and having sex everywhere. America is a strange place."
   I was about to argue the case for my adopted homeland, but as I opened my mouth, I caught sight of a sexagenarian male dressed as a female toddler and applying rouge at the other end of the dining hall. I shook hands with Stacek, the only person I had met outside of the scene in days, and I stared out at the gloom.
   Before I left for camp, my editor told me there were three categories of kids who went to summer camp. Some kids assimilate immediately, disappearing into the throng before their parents have left the parking lot. Others might feel lonely and uncool for the first few days before falling in with a like-minded crowd; they ultimately have to be dragged away. Then there are the kids who piss the bed and want to go home.
   Figuratively, at leather camp I had pissed the bed. As I sat in the dining hall, watching the rain drive against the window in chilly sheets, I was overwhelmed by the need to leave. The continuing monsoon threatened to compromise the rest of the weekend's events; it had driven people inside, into more intimate, insular activities. Everyone at camp seemed to be having the times of their lives, and I was not included. Not being straight-up about what I was doing there was starting to become a massive burden. I just wanted everybody to get on with having fun.
   As soon as I decided I had to go, I felt a massive sense of relief. I ran through the downpour to camp HQ and checked in my bed linen. There were only two trains to New York that day, and I was determined to catch the earliest one. The train station was a few miles away, but purportedly there was a cab company around. Problem: I had no idea how to contact them. Smoke signals? Boomerang? I asked around. Some guy gave me a phone number that turned out to be disconnected. Another number I pried out of somebody else was for the town's antiques store. Apparently the woman who answered the phone didn't have much else to do, because she offered to look up the cab company in her Yellow Pages. Finally — a real number for a real person! A real person who said, "I'm sorry, I don't have any cars." I wasn't sure if she meant ever or just then.
   I then burst into tears. No joke. The woman politely wished me a nice day and hung up. After a few more frantic, fruitless inquiries, I saw a face I recognized: George, a member of Amanda's crew who I'd met at the orgy. I told him I was desperate to get to the train station. He sprang into action, getting express permission to give me a ride. I was totally knocked out by his kindness. Despite the treacherous conditions, George got me to the empty station with fifteen minutes to spare. I tried to give him some money for his time, but he just winked and said, "The next time someone asks you, repay them with a favor." He drove off.
   And this is where it gets all corny and mystical. No sooner did George pull away than a woman came up to me and asked for change. I didn't know they had panhandlers in the sticks. She was toothless, in her sixties and soaked through. "Mister, I'm stranded," she said. "Can I have a dollar for a cup of coffee?" I reached into my pocket, mindful that train fare to New York was sixty bucks. I had no change; giving her my smallest bill — a fiver — would put me short. I told her I couldn't help her out. She smiled and started walking down the stairs that ran underneath the tracks. I stared into space for a second before realizing that this was a Huge Fucking Karmic Moment. I ran after the woman and gave her some cash. As long as the conductor didn't throw me off the train before I got closer to civilization, I didn't much care about bunking the fare. The train turned up, and I ran to catch it.
   I'm writing this en route to the city. It's still raining. I'm sort of saddened by the realization that I couldn't endure camp any longer. By my own design, I was the weird kid there, and after days of being cagey about who I was and what I was doing, I'm glad to be returning to the populace at large. Looking around the train at other passengers, I can't help imagining them in fetishwear, with pieced genitalia. It isn't hard to do.
    We're getting closer to the city now. I'm thinking about how I slunk out of camp while everyone was having a great time, despite the terrible weather. I imagined that there would be tears, back slaps and hugs at the end of the week. I'm starting to think that the folks at leather camp — despite, or perhaps because of, their individual kink — have a better sense of self than I can boast of. Even though many of the people I met talked about camp as a respite from reality, their reality seemed truer, if just for a few days, than the one on the outside.

Yours,
Grant
 n°