Nostalgic Stories of Summer-Camp Sexual Awakenings

 For parents sending a teen to summer camp must be a deal with the devil You get a break from caring for your angsty kid but in e change you live with the knowledge that little Madison might suck a dick this summer Communal sleeping shared showers and minimal supervision often at the hands of slightly older and even hornier youths add up to a pressure cooker of hormones humiliation awkward fumbling and memorable discoveries To kick off the Cut s Summer Se Week we collected ten people s most vivid memories of summer camp se and se gone awry and confused preteen discoveries and other strangely nostalgic humiliations 1 Fake Orgasms Sweep Horse Camp When I was 11 there was a fake orgasm craze at Camp Rim Rock s horseback riding camp for girls It started when Lauren Petersen asked if anyone else had tickling feelings while grinding on a Western saddle Lauren was the alpha girl of my cabin She was cool and tough and came from New York and had a Beastie Boys cassette When she stole my pink training bra I was kind of honored If Lauren Petersen felt tickles on horses then feeling tickles on horses was cool Soon everyone was feeling tickles or trying to feel them or faking them It was like the Salem Witch Trials I will never say whether my horsegasms were fake I was kicked out of the horsegasm clique after fighting Lauren for my bra On laundry day I snatched it back then dramatically wrote my name on it in black permanent marker ruining the bra for both of us After that I had to be friends with a girl with a bowl cut who kept apologizing for having the same last name as me She said it meant her family used to enslave mine White guilt starts so young 2 Camp Spirit or Furry Fetish All camp hookups in my e perience were a little predator prey I was 15 when a 2 year old counselor convinced me it would be hilarious if we stole full body squirrel costumes from the drama supply closet the squirrel was our camp mascot and snuck through the woods to terrorize kids who were camping in tents that night So we put on the costumes and hiked to the campsite and ended up making out on a picnic table in full body fur suits squirrel heads perched beside us 3 Se ual Shaving Rituals We always shaved our 12 year old legs outside where the boys could see sitting on towels spread over the pavement that connected the girls camp to the boys camp When I was 13 my counselor got me and another camper to shave her vag before she met up with her boyfriend We did it outside on the porch her lying down and us on either side of her giggling She was 16 and told us all her se stories She once dared several girls in my bunk to put Gold Bond on our vaginas It was so cold that it stung and I e perienced a kind of sensitivity generally reserved for varsity S M games I think the counselor got a perverse kick out if it even though she is straight She is now a wedding planner Still she gave me some good advice When my prepubescent tits were getting squeezed like tiny stress balls during make outs behind the bunk my counselor said I should tell the boys Be gentle 4 Lesbian Stirrings at Bible Camp I wouldn t say I realized I was gay at church camp When I had my first kiss at camp it was with a boy I was a hard core Te as Bible baby but my camp shared space with other groups and many weren t Christian There was this one older girl who wasn t with us And she was so beautiful I still remember it ark hair down to her waist little khaki shorts I was 11 I didn t understand se but I remember sitting at a campfire sing along and just staring at her legs Then I looked up and saw her looking back at me with this face that said I know e actly what you re thinking you dirty little lesbian Not in a mean way just the same thing she did when little boys had crushes on her It was encouraging in a way I hadn t e perienced before Being interested in girls had never been an option I d never consciously e plored it before I essentially spent the ne t few weeks there looking at her legs From that point on I paid attention to girls I looked at them I looked at the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition I remember thinking the se scene in Multiplicity was hot Andie Mac owell with a southern accent and a full length nighty I was so into that 5 The Girl Who iscovered Orgasms I had my first orgasm at Jewish summer camp the result of dry humping against a cabin A few years later I lost my virginity at a summer camp on a kibbutz I had se five times that night including in the shower and came every time Talk about getting off to a good blessed start 6 Naked Boy Uproarious Laughter In 1983 I was 11 years old too young to be interested in seeing what a naked girl looked like but old enough to be terrified of being seen naked by one myself But the other boys in my cabin a year ahead of me and with puberty underway proposed that the girls cabin join us after dinner for skinny dipping in the Au Sable River in northern Michigan where we had gone for a canoeing trip I was afraid to participate but even more afraid that declining would harm my already tenuous social standing So it was agreed The boys would head off into the trees to the right of the campsite strip and jump into the river where the girls would meet us When we arrived I was wearing nothing but the waterproof watch that came free with my subscription to Sports Illustrated the girls still stood on the shore where they informed us that they would not be joining us in the river and had furthermore taken our clothes and would watch us come retrieve them A couple boys proudly marched out of the river The rest came out crouching over to hide their privates I stayed behind out of a combination of fear and the wan hope that if I waited long enough everybody would get bored and leave This did not happen And so getting colder and colder I slowly trudged out crouching and covering everybody else now clothed and staring at me Somebody asked me what time it was The request somehow triggered an automatic reflect and I was momentarily transported out of the moment I stood straight up looked at my watch and answered And then I looked down at my cold wet e posed prepubescent boyhood and everybody boys and girls alike was laughing uproariously at me Honest I hadn t realized what would happen when I picked up my hand to check my watch I have never worn a timepiece since and honest it just occurred to me as I recalled this story that this might be the reason why 7 The Birth of a Teen Hussy The summer after seventh grade I went on a bike tour from Vermont and into Canada I was the only girl on the trip aside from the counselor with whom I shared a tent but no rapport We rode 6 miles a day Somewhere around the border of Canada we camped on a beach It had been about ten days and I hadn t had any fun with the random group of dorks on my trip but that night I heard a party raging down the beach I waited until the counselor fell asleep then snuck out of our tent and walked toward the party It was a big bonfire loads of booze local teens I met a very cute blond 16 year old and told him I was 15 I was 13 He took me into the woods and chalk it up to boredom or my first taste of anonymous hooking up but I decided that I would give this stranger my first ever blow job I didn t tell him I just went for it When I returned to my tent the counselor was frantic She had woken up realized I was gone and freaked out I was promptly kicked off the bike tour sent alone by Greyhound bus back to Port Authority for my parents to retrieve me I never told a living soul what I did with that boy It was the beginning of many years as a teen hussy 8 The Topless Girl Who Ran Into Her ad I attended a church camp that my super strict church put on every summer Premarital se was a sin punishable by eternal damnation and girls couldn t wear jewelry makeup or anything tight or low cut The opposite se was referred to as the brothers or the sisters and we were kept mostly separate outside of meals lectures and campfire sing alongs The year I turned 16 my dad volunteered as the camp s director and decided that each age group would have its own color denoted by T shirts My XXL purple T shirt was four sizes too large I m still not sure if that was a mistake or if ad did it to reign in my precociousness But my friends shirts fit them so I would take turns wearing my friend Sarah s T shirt swapping at the end of the day One night after a sing along I thinking I had a tank top underneath whipped off Sarah s T shirt like it was no big deal Her eyes bulged and I realized that I was wearing only my silky padded bra from Victoria s Secret itself a contraband item in front of maybe 5 fundamentalist teenagers of both genders I freaked and ran to the closest building with my arms crossed over me I opened the first door I saw and plunged in thinking it would be empty Inside was my father He was giving a presentation to a handful of national and regional church leaders who were visiting our camp Freaking out again I ran behind the whiteboard of his presentation The church elders awkwardly shuffled out and then my father came back and kindly handed over his sports jacket To this day we have never talked about it 9 First Kiss A Tale of Minor Tragedy I had my first kiss at summer camp Wanna blow me he asked a few seconds later I didn t know what blow meant so I didn t respond but after a few more seconds of kissing I knew I would do anything for this boy He was the love of my life So that night I asked an older girl to e plain blowing I d barely processed the information when I walked into the cafeteria the ne t morning and saw the older girl holding hands with the love of my life She had somehow managed to track him down and blow him before breakfast I ran to the bathroom and sobbed A few days later I found a new boy to kiss and forgot all about the first one I don t remember either of their names anymore 1 Caught in Headlights At a church camp when I was 16 I became a secret item with a boy I wasn t a camper my family was in an in between home situation that year so we lived there and I did office work to earn my keep The boy would sneak away from activities to hang out with me On the night he was leaving I snuck out to his cabin to say good bye What we did not know was that his dad had already arrived to pick him up The staff including my mom were looking for us everywhere We were caught literally in headlights when my mom and another staffer drove up in a golf cart shouting The boy being quite the gentleman sprinted away and left me to be interrogated alone efinitely a lesson in the kind of man one wants or does not want in her life