T he kids in my cabin thought it was weird that I wasn't circumcised, so they nailed my penis to a tree. Not the whole thing, just my foreskin. It really fucking hurt. After they left, I stood there for a while, trying to get the nail out with my hands, but it wouldn't budge. I started yelling, and this girl Colleen found me. I'd mistaken her for a boy on the first day of camp, and she hadn't spoken to me since. Now she was standing there in her cut-off shorts, staring at my dick. "What happened?" she asked.

Her voice was kind of froggy, and she had no tits and short hair. She wasn't ugly, just regular. I thought she should

probably grow her hair if she didn't want people thinking she was a boy, but that was just my opinion.

"Could you go get one of the counselors?" I said. "I'm bleeding."

It was annoying, how she had to think about this for a second. Finally she said, "All right."

"Hurry," I said as she turned to leave. Then I watched her basically saunter back to camp. I thought for sure she wasn't going to get help, but about twenty minutes later, Andy showed up with a claw hammer. "What the fuck is this?" he said, immediately prying me loose. Colleen stood by, studying the scene, and I thought things could've been worse. She could've brought some of the other kids with her.

Andy took me to the emergency room in his truck. He was from Texas and drove up to Michigan every summer to serve as the camp's athletic director. He had light brown hair that curled in the humidity and shocking blue eyes. When you looked at them, you couldn't help but search for the edge of a colored contact lens. The best thing about Andy was how he was always saying stuff like, "George Clooney is a good-looking guy. If I was a girl, I'd do him." Then he'd go off and kick your ass in touch football. As soon as camp started, all of us Midwesterners were saying "ya'll" from liking him so much.

At the hospital, the doctor cleaned and bandaged my wound, then gave me a tetanus shot. Afterward, I called my mother from the waiting room. "What do you mean they nailed your penis to a tree?" she said. She sounded more irritated than worried. Like she thought I was making it up.

"Ask Andy," I said, handing over the phone. I really couldn't stand to have a conversation about my penis with my mother.

I tuned out while he was talking and looked around at all the other sick people. You could pretty much tell what their problems were based on the fact that they were clutching some part of themselves or some other part was bleeding. I'd been jealous of them when we'd first walked in, that their pains had seemed so normal. Now, on the way out, I was feeling oddly proud. "That's some kind of war wound," the doctor had told me, shaking his head. "You're a real trooper." I would never have asked to have my dick nailed to a tree, but now that it had been, and I was a trooper, I didn't really mind.

Andy handed the phone back and said my mom wanted to talk to me. Her voice was all sympathetic as she asked, "Are you all right? What did those little fuckers do to you? I'll sue every fucking one of them."

"Don't worry about it," I said. "I'm cool."

"I mean, that's sheer barbarism," she said.

"It's okay, Mom." She always did this. Went way too far, or else not far enough.

"We'll see about that," she snapped.

On the ride home, Andy made me tell him who'd done this to me. I wasn't a tattletale, but I went ahead and ratted them out anyway. It was just making me feel so good, how mad he was getting on my behalf. Back at camp, he rounded the four of them up and demanded an explanation. A couple of them mumbled something about me having a hoodie on my woodie, and Andy told them to shut the hell up. He said he expected a lot better from the kids at Arts Camp, then he called their parents to come get them.

That night, I had the cabin to myself. My wound was like a migraine between my legs, so I took some ibuprofen and went to bed. As I lay on my top bunk, I couldn't stop thinking about Colleen. How I'd sent her running into the woods that first day. How she'd introduced herself to me, and I'd said: "Colleen. That's a funny name for a boy." But she wasn't a boy. She was a girl. The first one ever to have seen my dick.