It is hard for counselors to hook up, but not impossible.
—–
Camp Dickinger: An Adventure Camp for High School Boys and Girls is what it says on the sign and in the brochures. The sign hangs over the gate that marks the winding dirt road to our campus from a rural highway in the mountains of Virginia. If you take the turn, you will wind through some dense trees up the mountainside to an open meadow, with a large stream-fed lake, tennis courts, basketball courts, and a boat house. On one end of the meadow is the large chow hall with attached camp office, and along either side is a row of screened-in cabins. The North row is for guys, and the South is for the girls. Set back in the woods are the rifle and archery ranges, lots of hiking trails, and other activity facilities like the pottery shed.
You might find a picture of Camp Dickinger in the dictionary under ‘bucolic’.
This summer would be my third as a counselor at the camp, and I felt like it was a second home. After all, I had been a camper there as well, the summers after my Sophomore through Senior years of high school. Now that I was a counselor, I, like most of the counselors, cheerfully and affectionately despised the ‘worms’, I mean campers. I remember being a camper, of course. I was a pain in the ass too, back then, just like these worms now.
There were no worms yet in residence when we summer staff arrived. I and three other counselors, all in our mid twenties, piled out of the van the camp had sent to gather us from the airport, dragging our duffles with us. We counselors came from all over the place, so that van, and its mate, would spend all day collecting more of us from the nearby small airport as our flights trickled in. Despite the fact that we would all be there for nearly three months, we had each packed fairly light. All we really needed were tons of shoes, socks, and underwear, our toiletries, swimsuits, and any specialty items we needed for activities we might lead, like tennis racquets. We would all, guys and girls alike, wear the uniform of the camp, orange athletic shorts and white t-shirts with the camp’s name emblazoned across the front, every day for the rest of the summer.
The camp director, Carol Moscone, was sitting at a table under a portable pavilion tent, checking in each van load of counselors as we arrived. As we straggled toward the tent, she bounced to her feet and excitedly came to greet us. Carol hugged those of us who were returning staff, and enthusiastically shook the hand of Cindy, a cuteish redhead who was the only newbie in our van.
Hugs from Carol are nice. Even at forty-one, she still fills out the orange uniform shorts nicely, and the white camp t-shirt very nicely. It is always a good day when Carol decides to work the swimming hole. And if Carol doesn’t know the libidinous effect that she has on the young guys, campers and counselors alike, I’ll eat my hat.
She shooed us off to our assigned cabins to unpack, sending us each with a laundry pack full of uniforms. I found mine and settled in my stuff, setting things up so it was clear that I owned the place. The worms needed to know that they lived in my cabin, not theirs. This would be my first year as the head counselor in a cabin, which was nice, I guess.
I have since my camper days been considered one of the more responsible types, and for my sins, I was gifted with a cabin full of Seniors. My worms would all be eighteen, or nearly so. My job would therefor not involve a lot of comforting sniffling, homesick kids, as it had been the prior year when I was in a Freshman cabin. Controlling Seniors takes a special breed of psychological manipulation and subtle, physical intimidation. At six-three and a bit over two hundred pounds of ropy muscle, I was certainly qualified for the imposing part. The summer would tell if I could handle the manipulation.
My teammate in the cabin, Van Davidson, arrived on the next van. “Casper!” he shouted as he entered the cabin, and we high-fived. Van was my age, and we had been at Dickinger together as campers before we came back for the job. He was shorter than me and had wavy, dark hair, as opposed to my, um, none. Male pattern baldness hits my family very young, and by twenty-one, I had decided to lean into it and go all Mr. Clean. My scalp was as smooth and tan as the rest of me.
I loved Van to death, and the campers would too. As I saw it, that was a problem because Van still thought a bit too much like an adolescent to keep the actual adolescents in line the way he should. It was going to suck being the responsible one on the team….
*
That first afternoon and evening, before the worms would arrive the next day, we went through a bunch of orientation sessions, had dinner, then enjoyed a big, camper-free Campfire late into the night. I loved Campfires. You did not go to camp, as a camper or staff, if you didn’t love Campfire. The smell of brightly burning wood and the flickering island of light, surrounded by inky blackness was always intoxicating to me.
And while riding herd on Van, along with the dudes that he was supposed to be helping me ride herd on, was going to suck, what was not going to suck was being around this year’s crop of the girl counselors. Honestly, I’ve always suspected that Carol works very hard to have the best-looking young counselors she can manage to hire, and this year she had outdone herself. I don’t rate women on the cheesy and useless one to ten scale, preferring a simple No, Yes, and Oh God, Please! This year’s crop of female counselors had damned few Nos, and three honest-to-god Pleases.
Two of them I knew from the year before, Elaine and Wendy. Both were blonde, average height, slender, and had smiles to die for. Wendy added some serious firepower in the t-shirt area to her arsenal. I knew and liked both, but had never really had a chance to spend much time with either. Your time is pretty regimented at camp, even (or perhaps especially) for the counselors. The activities I worked and the rest of my schedule had just never matched up with either of them in the prior two years.
The newest smoke show apparently was named Lisa, and… whoa. She was probably twenty-two, with strawberry blonde hair that she wore in a long ponytail. It was hard to tell that first night, but she was clearly tall, taller than most of the other girls. She already had a rocking tan built up, even though the summer was just beginning, and that tan covered a seriously toned body. She also seemed to have deliberately chosen a uniform pack with clothes a size too small. That wasn’t all that uncommon. Elaine did it too, for instance. But I thought Lisa might have chosen uniforms two sizes too small….
Her orange shorts plastered over her tight, curvy, but petite hips. The girls’ uniform shorts were pretty short to begin with, but her undersized ones left acres of tanned, taut thigh to see. She wore almost dorkily high athletic tube socks, which on her were cute, and emphasized the fact that she had some beautifully shaped calves, as well. The girls’ t-shirts had a fairly wide scoop neck, and Lisa had already mastered the knack of tugging hers forward to actually rock a little cleavage… or a good bit of cleavage in her case. She had one hell of a rack, with high, round tits that were the size of small grapefruit. Whatever bra she had on under that shirt, and even in the flickering firelight, and it was clear that she did have a bra on, was working overtime.
She looked like she was already making friends easily. The girls sit on one side of the fire, and we sit on the other, and she was smiling and laughing with the counselors to either side of her, each lovely girls themselves, but left in the shadows by Lisa’s looks. Yet neither one seemed remotely catty toward her. She must be really nice, I thought, on top of being the whole package.
We listened to Carol and the other senior staff go over some last details about the summer, and the first session in particular, then we sang all the traditional songs, to make sure we remembered them before the worms got here. We would have to teach the noobs, and refresh the returning campers on the music, after all. I could not quite keep my eyes off of Lisa, though.
I stared at her indirectly, with my head turned in other directions, letting just my eyes point toward her. That made it easy to not get caught when her eyes passed over me. I wasn’t creeping on just her, of course. I also creeped a good bit on Elaine and Wendy, but Lisa was the novel entry. Mostly however, I just sang and bullshitted with the guys around me, enjoying the evening and the company.
Still, my gaze kept swinging back to the new girl.
After most of the evening had passed, I got a little lost staring at Lisa, and I fucked up. I let my face point straight at her while I drank her in. She seemed to have pretty good awareness, and she sensed that she was being looked at. Her eyes swung toward me, and I had to jerk my head to the side to avoid her gaze. That was close, she had almost caught me.
I looked back at her after a moment, surreptitiously, and found myself staring into her eyes. She was still looking at me. Nope, I was fully busted. I smiled weakly at her. She looked archly back at me for a moment, as if mocking my temerity, but then she winked and turned back to her new friends.