The Reluctant Receptionist

you probably already know this, because i love this story and i tell almost everyone, but cory and i met when i was 17 years old at a summer camp for the arts in oklahoma. this place has been going on for years, and i think that it’s one of the best things about growing up queer in oklahoma, as long as you’re an artist or musician. you know, artsy. you audition for a panel of judges; the auditions are really stringent because if you get in you pay something absurd like 125 dollars. (i’m sure it’s more now since i was there eleven years ago.) anyway, if you get in you get to spend two weeks at summer camp spending all day working on your field of choice with really gifted teachers, then at night you visit the other disciplines. in between all of that, at least when i went eleven and twelve years ago, you get the freedom to hang out with other kids like you, which mean punk queer outcast queeny black latino white artisit musician actors. you (used to be able to) chain smoke cigarettes, you shit-talk, you fall in love. and for many people that go there, myself included, it’s the first time that you get to be around other people like you. it’s the first time that you see a world that’s bigger than where you came from, where you’re not weird because you’re skinny and jewish-looking and queer.

obviously, i look back at the two years i spent there with just a little bit of fondness. and it’s not nostalgia, because i’ve always felt like this. when i was 17, i couldn’t wait to go back. and when i aged out of the program at 18, i knew that i’d never again get to experience something like it. this isn’t to say that adult life doesn’t have its own treats, it’s to say that i look back on those summers (could they really have just been two weeks each?) as some of the most exciting, new, wonderful times of my life. and it was in that context that i met cory, who i had developed a crazy camp crush on and became what i like to call “my first camp boyfriend ever.” cory was everything i was missing in ponca city: he seemed terribly urbane, jaded, funny, dirty, irreverent. he smoked before i started smoking, and i thought it was very dangerous. in a sexy way. after camp, cory and i fell out of touch. i knew that he’d planned to move to nyc, but i never spoke to him again until i ran into him at a bar in norman in 2004, when i was living in baltimore. i gave him my email and never heard from him. (apparently, he was drunk and lost my email. and felt bad about it.)

when i moved to astoria in 2006, i ran into him, and learned that he was living down the street from me. i always say that cory and i were meant to be friends, but it just took us 10 years to make it happen. i said, “you might not remember me, but you were my first camp boyfriend ever.” he said, “robert. m. i am taking you out to dinner.” and i’ve seen him several times a week since then.

i bring all this up because cory just got word that he gets to go back to that camp this summer as a counselor. he gets to facilitate what will be for many teenagers the best two weeks of their young lives. and i am jealous of every bit of it. i’m jealous that he gets to go to oklahoma in the summer, jealous that he gets to guide these kids, jealous that he gets to spend two weeks with other grown-up oklahoma artists. we were supposed to go together, but i couldn’t take the time off work. maybe someday; for now, i hope he takes a lot of pictures.