Hogs summer Hocus Hocus have a kick ass summer. Duh. Because I'm a bad girl, because we're the bad kids, and she's sheen Ami no mate, no my name yo? No? What is your child trauma? I am a Your life's going down before round.
Welcome to Like a Virgin, the show where we give yesterday's pop culture today's takes. I'm Rose DomU and I'm Fran Toronto.
And.
Today the evil will be defeated and Pride Month will be over.
That's not technically true, Rose, I mean.
Today is in the day that this episode comes out, Oh, the last the last day of June.
You know, it's still not true. Rose. Pride is all year round. The thing about pride be for yourself, babes. Pride wasn't even Pride wasn't even in June for me. This year, pride is a state of minds. And pride happens in the UK in July, it happens in it you know, in Atlanta in October. Don't happens in New Orleans in September. Pride happens everywhere all the time because we are prideful all year round. And this year, in
partnership with JP Morgan. And on that note, a word from our sponsor, Zappo's Shoes is the Beast.
You shouldn't because because we probably do have an ad that's like that we just don't that we just don't know about.
Okay, wait, dream Dream Pride sponsorship. Okay, they're buying out that. It's not just a spot, they're buying out like an advertorial. Okay, who is the brand we want? The Church of Scientology. You are only saying that because you want to suck Tom Cruise. Well, yeah, duh. My dream partnership would probably be like, what's something that I legitimately need, like emodium? Oh don't know, you know what I would love because I'm thinking about Gaga right now, if I might as
well go big Pharma. I want my Pride partnership for this podcast to be Titlenal extra strength rapid release gels. Okay, this is not every painkiller. This is not every woman. Okay, not ibuprofen. She is an amazing pain reliever that does not in your blood. It acts immediately, and it's very potent, and it's like unlike other painkillers. This I'm literally doing an advertiying. Okay, let's let's move it a lot. Let's
move it a pride. I was your pride friend. My pride was filled with the tite little extra strength rapid release jels because I was hungover, stopped doing spot No seriously, I was so drunk and did a lot of drugs and smoked a lot of weed. And that is pride to me. As you know, I did pretty much the opposite of you, which is go to club, another club,
another club, bus train, no sleep, no sleep. I have been going to parties all month, not a ton of sponsored parties, which I love, like not even like only like one fashion party, like only really going to like people's convene gatherings, drag events, things that are like self produced or like community produced. I think is like where
we should be putting our energy and dollars. Yes, but I also went to body Hack, an amazing trans party that my friend reoed with her organizing collective, and then Poppy Juice after that, and then the next day I went to Dike March, and then I went to Gush, which my friend Angie helps put on. And it's been a queer ass weekend. And then yesterday I went to your least favorite place on the planet and my favorite place on the planet Jacob eas Beach. I will never
go there again. I love that beach. Anyways, what did you do this weekend? Rose? So?
I well, Thursday, I kicked off Pride by doing a corporate panel with friend of the podcast Charlene.
That actually went well. It was very chill.
And then Friday, my friend and I went out of town for the weekend to Wyndham, New York, which is in the Catskills.
Windham that sounds very Bridgerton. It's a very.
It was a very like picturesque little town. And then we were in a cabin that was like faux remote, you know, like it was pretty close to everything, but it looked like very scenic around it. The house was, you know, it had kind of all of the typical airbnb problems. The beds were not very comfortable. It was super hot in it when we got in there, and I had to put the ac in myself.
Which was not great. We are going to be talking about and just like that on the Patreon. I was just about to start talking about it now, and then I caught myself and I said, wait a second, the conversation is Paywald.
Yes, we have a lot to say though, I do have a lot to say about and just like that, and we're not even we're not even going to give you top level thoughts. If you want a glimpse of taste, a taste of the end, just like that combo, you
can hear it. But if you want our full thoughts, and I think this will probably be how we get through the season of end just like that, because the episodes come out Thursday, so just like timing wise, it doesn't really make sense for us to talk about the previous week's episode.
So I believe that.
And just like that, discussions will live on the Patreon, So go to patreon dot com, slash like a virgin and become a patron if you want to hear our thoughts about it.
Gorge h literally so much. Okay, no other TV this weekend, right, I mean you were just reading on your little your little pride escape and your little pride escape hat.
No, we actually did watch a couple episodes of Glamorous on Netflix and it seems fun.
It's fun. Is it about like a editor and she like a mean editor lady and like a lowly assistant. That that is the problem with it.
No, the problem is that Kim Katrall is basically playing Miranda Priestley in the Devorce praduc if she was nice?
What? And that's boring? Why is she nice?
I don't know. I wish I knew she is nice. She's a nice boss was a nice What is the conflict? The conflict seems to be that the main character is and he's not he in the show is not even non binary. What they're actually I'm about four episodes in there has been zero discussion of gender. No one's at any point like asked his pronouns, and like they're basically no person that's I guess that's fine, And like at one point they do make reference to being a femme
gay guy. But for a show that's like the headline is about a boy who wears makeup, it is seems to be remarkably uninterested in the you know, gender and identity implications of that.
Which is can I guess a choice? I I really shouldn't say any because I have not watched a single second of the show, not even the trailer, so I don't even know what it's about totally. But from what you're describing, I will say it is awesome to have any sort of circumstance where you know a transactor is playing a cisgender role. I actually don't even know if miss Benny identifies as trans, but like she's definitely giving
on binary and I think that's dope. I am shocked though that Netflix would not have would not lean into that conversation, you know, in the kind of writing way. But maybe that's a great thing. And I don't know how that what this show feels like. But like if someone's like visibly gender non conforming, I don't really need to have a convert I don't need like there to be a scene that's like a conversation about it. But in a real life it would come up naturally in
a little in between moments. There are ways to crack jokes about it and reference it. Honestly, sort of this does this really well, sort of an HBO the kind of trans South Asian Daria that I was telling you about. The jokes are very like off the cuff gender jokes that like fit in between the actual plot and meat of the show. Anyways, Yeah, I mean I will watch it. I'm gonna it is a fun like head empty trash TV watch, and that is what I will say about it. Oh, well, is that I do? I do? I hear? Do I
hear an episode coming up? What is that? I what are you holding? I'm holding a large shell to my ear. Yeah, and I think I'm getting that. We are talking about summer camp today.
Yes, we are talking about camp, not the not the met Gala theme, but place, the actual place that you go. Yes, Ryan, did you spend a lot of time.
At camp? Is that what you did in the summers when you were coming out Jesus Camp seven summers in a row. Baby, Oh my god, I didn't even think about that, the fact that you would have gone. I went to Jesus when we talked about the Jesus version of it. Yes, yes, yes, I loved. Okay, So what's your earliest memory of Jesus Camp. Well, okay, we had before Jesus Camp, like sleep away camp, like proper sleep
away camp. We did have like a vacation Bible School, which is kind of like a day camp for todd for like, you know, babies, to like go and do activities and play play with like the other church kids and stuff like that. That I guess I kind of enjoyed because it was something to do during the day, and I liked my church friends, I think, but Jesus Camp, like where you go and you sleep there for like one or two or three weeks at a time, was
very cult like. And obviously that you don't say, I mean, obviously it's because of Jesus, but also like, since we're talking about it broadly, like summer camp does like kind of function like a cult sometimes, Like you do kind of enter this summer camp brain space that is different from when you go back home, like it feels for a different life for sure.
Well, you have your camp friends, you can sort of reinvent yourself at camp. But then but then once you're locked into a camp, then you are that person for the duration.
Of your camp. Well, okay, what was your first summer camp? Did you have to did you ever reinvent yourself?
So so, I you know, am part of a long lineage of Jews who believe in packing their children off to be taken care of by nineteen year olds from Australia and New Zealand basically as soon as they're old enough so that they can you know, like go on
summer vacations to Europe or like do whatever. So you know, my mom and her brothers were sent off to a sleep Boy camp as soon as they were old enough, and I the same was done for my brother and I. You know, you got to get the kids out of the house during the summer and pay someone to take.
And wait, sorry, how long were you away? So okay.
I didn't start going to sleep Boy camp until I was eleven, maybe ten or eleven.
You know.
Up until then, I would go to day camp I went to. It was always sort of temple adjacent to like a camp that was run out of the synagogue that we went to, and then I went to a theater camp that was also still a day camp. Then there was one summer where we went to a camp where you slept there during the week but you went home on the weekends. And it was in the city that I lived in, So that was sort of like training wheels for Sleepway Camp. And then I went to
Sleepway Camp for the first time. I believe the summer I was ten or eleven and my younger brother was two years younger than me. We both went and that was like also kind of training wheels for Sleepway Camp because I think it was only a week or two long. I don't remember much about that camp experience, except that on the way back, I was flying back, because you know,
these camps are always somewhere in the Northeast. I think this one was in Main And on the flight back, for some reason, I got bumped up to first class, so I was like ten or you're my oh god, flying flying alone.
In first oil rotten in real time, getting spoiled rotten. But I got sick from the food or something.
And this is a very this is a very vivid, like core foundational building blocking memory for me.
So I got sick from the plane. I do remember this like this.
The flight attendants were all very into me because it was like such a novelty, this like kid alone in first class. I'm sure I was like super faggy. And then when I got home, it was the summer that Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets came out, and I had begged my parents to get it for me, And when I got home, the book was waiting for me on my bed, and all I wanted to do
was stay up all night and read it. But I was deliriously ill from whatever had consumed on the plane, so I slept for a full twenty four hours when I got home and I came downstairs, you know, to like for breakfast or whatever. When I finally was sick, and my family was like, I can't believe what you did last night. And I was like, what are you
talking about? They were like, you came downstairs. And so this was the nineties, and you know, nineties were a very water cooler culture, and we had a water cooler in the kitchen.
You know that you with like this big water cooler water for a water cooler culture in your own home kitchen got over, yes, And they said that during the night, while they were all sitting around having dinner, I had come downstairs, walked up to the water cooler, pissed in it as if it were a urinal, without saying a word, and then gone back upstairs and gone back to sleep. You were wait, were you sleepwalking? I was sleepwalking? I don't.
I haven't known memory of this. Well, how could you so accurately piss into a water cooler in your sleep? That's not possible. You were possessed. I was possessed by I was much like much like Ginny Weasley and Harry Potter and the Chamber of secrets. God, God, that's so weird. Rose, you should be more so by that story. I know
it was. It's very that has it's it is giving hereditary, and it's something that has haunted me throughout my entire life, and like growing up, my my mom and my stepdad and my brother would always joke about it, and I'd get really pissed off, like because it was embarrassing because I didn't remember it and it I was humiliated. So that to me is like the beginning of my summer camp journey and in many ways makes a lot of
sense considering some of the experiences I've had at variously. Question, So, since you're sharing embarrassing stories, I will concede the fact that I was a bed wetter probably until I was almost like tennish. But I don't know. I don't think I've ever pissed my pants at camp, like to my recollection, I feel like I would viscerally remember that. But I definitely had that fear every time I was in a
sort of slumber party situation. But honestly, my parents didn't really let me do sleepovers because you know, parents like those. I think there's a hard and fast rule with like more conservative parents are more like issy parents that just like they just don't do sleepovers, which is like bonkers to me. But I will tell you that my version of that story is I got pink I at Jesus Camp. I think my first or second year and pinky Okay,
when you're at summer camp, first things, First, you got crushes. Okay, you're telling everyone you got crushes on the girls. I personally secretly have crushes on the boys. You are surrounded by puberty. You're surrounded by people that are more puba yes, yes, pubes, people that are more pubescent than you like, and you feel insecure about like who's grown and who's not. You feel insecure about who's cool and who's not, Like what
movies they've seen that you've never heard of? Like I had so much insecurity at camp because you're coalescing with people that like aren't at your school, completely outside of your you know wherewithal So when I got pink eye and became this untouchable loser and everyone knew it, I was like, oh my god, could I have a more worse experience here at Jesus Camp. Everyone was like very gracious about it, Like no one really made fun of it because you know, everyone loved Jesus, but like, it
was still nasty and I do have like it. It is singed in my memory as an unpleasant camp experience, but I loved summer camp. Loved I also loved summer camp. I went to a camp that was okay. So there's a a very well known theater camp called French Woods. That's what the movie Camp is based off of, which is one of my favorite films Anna Kendrick, her best work, She Is Fucked, I'm Ready, and the Goddamn Show Must Gone. But we were sort of like a sister camp to
French Woods. So it was either sports or the arts, which I guess are still kind of the only camp activity. So it's not like we were special. But I was the only quote unquote boy who was like into theater only why not the only one, but I was the most into theater, so I got the lee and rolls in all that. I know that I knew that.
Yeah, so that was a big part of my camp experience. But also I have another embarrassing story that has something to do with evacuating your body. So I was I have always been very pe shy when I used to use bathrooms that had urinals in them.
I never pissed on someone during sex because you're p right, No, I like to be pressed on. I don't like. I still get very p shy.
So you know, back when I used to use bathrooms i had urinals, I like hated being at a urinal because I'm very p shy. I also in my childhood was very poop shy and I did not want to poop in public. So when I got to see you were one of those, I didn't seven day.
I knew I didn't shy. I didn't ship for a full for a full week. When I went to camp and I had to be sent I had to be sent to the click. I had to be sent to the clinic because I had like the worst just stomach ache ever. And the nurse took one look at me. I was like, when was the last night? And I was like, I was like at my grandma's house before we got here, and she was like, she was like, go in there and take a ship.
And I was like, can you like puun some music or something or like walk go out in the ride, and she did it did work.
I shot and I felt so much better and that was the first step in me becoming comfortable with shitting in public. In public such a funny and now I sha all the time everywhere. I mean, I still don't love to ship in like a crowded but you know when you're in an audience, but I do it because you know, it's what the people want when.
You're in a bunk with especially with teenage boys. Like that's the thing at my my bunk at Sleepway Camp. So it was like it wasn't so you know, you're like grouped by bunk at camp, but our bunks were like interconnected, so it was like four different bunk groupings. Then we all shared one big bathroom in the middle, so there there was always someone around listening to me take a dumb and it made me very self conscious, but you know it did help, is that especially that
first summer. The albums that went triple platinum and R Bunk were Eminem's debut album That's Extremely Summer and Yes and the south Park movie soundtrack, which I honestly I love the south Park movie south Park, bigger, longer and uncut scenes, and I was I was sitting on that
toilet singing blame Canada while I was trying to poop. No, okay, the South Park, the South Park of it all is emblematic of something that honestly, you know we're talking about right here in summer camp culture, which is that boys are disgusting.
South Park is disgusting just cater to like gross little boys.
And when you are at summer camp and you have to get used to, you know, pissed ship, pee, pooh, far, puke whatever, like, it's like they the kids they lean into that, get the boys lean into that, and so all of a sudden it's like he and pooh and fart and puke jokes, and it's like, no, like this is everyone's farting on each other, like you're spinning on people, like gendered memories like happening in those like toxically masculine spaces where I'm just like, I was like, this isn't
me dog, Like I don't understand, I don't belong here. Get me out, not dog. Yeah, camp food also will will stop you up. We have to say it.
Yes, there was one summer where I only ate jello from from the cafeteria, and I mean I was having some very liquidy shits.
It was.
It also like blue, like I don't, I don't recall, but that was also the summer that I had my first girlfriend, whose name I believe was Christine Christine, And it was also the summer that I that It was also the summer that I sucked my first dude.
Oh wow, two for one? Wait Christine? How long did that relate and ate pussy for the first time? Oh my god? Wait you did?
I had all my first sexual experiences your most bisexual summer? How How long did Christine the summer I turned pretty How long did wait? Is that that's a movie, right, it's a TV show? And okay, what was how long did your relationship with Christine last? I believe it was fairly long by camp standards, so I'm gonna say like six EPs.
Okay. I had a crush I think my second year at summer camp on a girl named Ashley, who I did really fall for and I tried. She lived in Michigan, but I my parents, our parents, respected parents, facilitated us meeting after camp, Like we met up in Michigan so we could go on this like chaperone date for like like me and my long distance like camp crush. Isn't that wild? Like, I don't know if I would ever do that. Seeing camp friends outside of camp isn't it
was so it's wrong. It's like it's like honestly, like you know, like you're at in Order Forbid. It's like you're at an orgy and they turn on the fluorescent lighting. It's like, so not like you because you're.
A different person at camp than you are in real life, and like the two are not supposed to miss. And if there's any time I've seen camp people outside of camp, and it's happened very rarely, it's felt so weird and wrong. Something that's very powerful about camp is that you never think about your parents, like or at least I didn't like parents being gone.
I really just not me. I like, oh, okay, you missed mom and dad.
Yeah, so at my So the proper Sleepway camp that I went to, you're not allowed to call home for the first seven days because they know that if you do, you'll be like I want to come home, So they force you to. They forced it to do no contact for the first seven days, and I was miserable. I wanted to get the fuck out of there. Also because so I went to camp in the Poconos in Pennsylvania,
and you know, I grew up in Florida. So before camp, we would go up to Long Island and stay with my grandma and grandpa for like a week or two, and then we.
Would go to camp. So by the time I got to camp, I had it had already been a long time since I had seen my mom, and I missed her.
So much, and she was so happy I was gone, so I was. It was I was very sad. But and what also made me upset was that such a huge part of camp, especially when we were going to camp, you know in the late nineties early two thousands, was receiving mail and getting letters and care packages from your parents. And let me tell you one thing my mom was not doing during the summer when her kids were a camp was putting together care packages.
She did not give a ship. Oh, my parents would do care packages, but that's because they missed me. And I what would you get in them? Yeah, blube com. You like, you're like write your mom. You're like, hey, next time, can you send me the one from from Yeah? You're like, next time, can you get the like artisanal poppers? I? Yeah, no, right, I feel I don't know. I would get like peanut em and m's I think I got. I would get like a book. You I think it was like stocked
with stuff from the camp store. But oh the com or the commissary or like whatever it's called, the gummy candies, the chocolate bars. H commissary was it. And they also would merch that you could buy you did. I think they had like store credits that your parents. It's so merch. It's just like I don't think it's like they're selling. It's not like they're selling chromatica jobs. They were at my Jesus camp. But unlike you, I never got homesick, okay,
hated going home and my parents picked me up. I was devastated. I did not want to leave. The only time I ever ever longed for home, which did not long for my parents long for home, was when I was at Boy quote unquote Scouts camp. Boy Scouts Camp was,
which was how old were you I was? I don't know, like I was a tween maybe so I was probably like eleven or twelve, like you know, waking up in like a wet tent on the floor on a tarp and like stinky boys eating gross chili mac and being disgusting doing disgusting things like shitting at holes and drinking ketchup from the bottle like like because they're daring each other.
Like way the things that boys do with food are so disgusting. Teenage, teenage and especially like pubescent boys are the literal worst people in the world.
Yeah they are. Just having been one of them, I can say that when I like surrounded by those disgusting boys like I actually very vividly remember going to like some sort of ski camp and like Austin and Bradley called me a fagot and I was like, and I was like, shut up you like literally like drink barbecue sauce, like you're disgusting. Who's the real fag real fag here? But like in that moment, I wasn't like sick for home.
I was like eleven years old, and I was like, I need to be in a hotel, like I cannot be here. I need to be comfortable.
You're such a fucking taurus. Did you do Did you do color war at camp?
Is that where you like would fling like you know, colored powder or like like paint balloons or something or what I remember? But color war colors like a race war. Phoebe said, the camp color wally, and there are you know, a hundred white, I mean, and three people of helm. Kind of it's like a it's like a week long camp wide thing where one half of camp is one color, one half of camp is another color.
It's usually red and blue is the number of It is a race war, and there's a number of competitions throughout the week, and one color wins at the end. So the camp I went to was split up into sessions throughout the summer, so there was like the early session, the middle session, the late session. My brother and I always went there for the early sessions because school in Florida let out earlier, but then we went back to school earlier, so we went back to school like mid August.
The kids who were in the Northeast didn't go back to school until after Labor Day, so they would always be there for the third session, and color War always happened during the third session, except for my last year at camp, which honestly was the year before my freshman year of high school. I was a little too old to be here there. I was a little too old for camp that year, and I really hated it. But that was the summer where all the suckingd fucking happened.
But that was the summer that I got to do Color War and I was blue and my color lost. And when I tell you, I have never been more devastated in my life than when we lost Color War. And I didn't participate in a single activity. I am not an outdoor girl in that way. I'm not doing the three legged race, I'm not hopping in a potato sock. I'm not doing like a baton relay race. I couldn't give a shit. But when we lost Color War, I sobbed.
I subbed, Babetta, get like my mom died. I gotta get a grip, my god, I do we Okay? So our camp definitely had a kind of a kind of camp wide game. We're in the respective cabins were pit against each other like each cabin is a team, and everyone had to do something something throughout the week. I don't even remember what the object object was, which is how little I cared. But on that note, uh, just another reason why camp is just not really my thing,
especially when it comes to boys. Camp is I Since I was a teeny tiny baby and now as a full fledged adults remains to be true. I absolutely despise manual labor of any kind. I will not do it unless I absolutely have to labor. No, yeah, I'm all about that. Will manual labor. Okay, I'm not tranual labor. That's so funny. Emual labor. Yeah, that's all I was trying to do. I was like, look out for that podcast coming next year. To that to the outspoken me
and Jonathan Vndes, No, I'm just kidding. No, Jonathan is transit, but yeah, I I am really just There's so many things that I loved about summer Camp, primarily just not being around my parents for two three weeks, but and I also loved, you know, autonomy. I loved like being able to like build friendships like outside of the context
of your own life, as we've talked about. But something that Phoebe has said in the chat that I think is a very lesbian contribution to this conversation is that parent Trap was extremely formative of my kind of like view on summer Camp. Like the summer camp in the movie is so idyllic and like fun and creative and naughty troublemakery, like you aspire to be as cool and like like as a rich a narrative as like those kids, and I really did fulfill that like ore and rich.
Yeah yeah, yeah, let's let's say that like those kids were rich, But no, I really did, like you have to be to be being sent to these camps, Like they cost a lot of money. OURK summer camps had like scholarships where you would get like stipends to like offset the cost of your like tuition.
But if I if I remember correctly, yeah, I actually think it costs like I think probably like a thousand dollars or something like that for me to go. I think it was at least a thousand dollars. I actually need to check in. I actually don't know how much how much it was, but I don't know. I did you do you like parent Trap?
Are you? Are you a parent Trap stand? Because I love the of course I feel like Meredith Blake, right, I mean, Meredith Blake is definitely formative cultural like figure like the evil femmes that I would latch onto. Meredith invented athletes. I feel like the parent Trap was unfortunately a very millennial thing, like it's like everyone yeah, like BuzzFeed culture like loves the Parent Trap, like the Parent Traps. They'll they'll never stop talking about it. It's like it's
the only movie that came out in the in the nineties. Yeah, that in Napoleone. So so.
I don't know about you, but you know, as I said, theater was the thing that I did at camp.
You know, that's that was my reason for being there. All the world of stage. Honey, hand me a microphone. And as I said, I starred in almost every production that we did during my time there. I was in Annie Get Your Gun. I was in Newsy's.
We did a production of Newsies long before it was made into a Broadway show, so it was like not very normal to do Newsies as a stage show.
I mean, we can believe this, But would you like to share who you played at any of these respective Yeah?
I was Frank in Newsy I mean I was Frank and any Get Your Gun, which is the male lead.
I did you know anything you can do? I can do better?
And of course all of these shows I wanted to play the I wanted to be Annie. And like it's the thing is there was still gender bending that happened because when I was in Newsi's the Christian Bale character was played by a little because there were not enough boys who wanted to do a theater, so they were casting It's like, you know, it's like very peter Pan.
This. They cast this like like androgynous young.
Female Williams in Yeah, I went to camp with Alison Williams. But yeah, I like I was such in my mind, I was such hot shit. But like the whole half of the camp that like didn't do anything, you know, theatrical, like thought we were all losers.
Which would you say on a metric of quality and your critical eye was the best production you did?
And why probably any gets your gun because there weren't as many fucking like toddlers in it as there were in Yeazies because we had to fill out the cast.
Yeah.
And then my last year at camp, when I was I had gotten you know, too old, I was like, I'm not doing theater this year because I'm better than this, because I'm going you know, I was like going to an art school that fall, and I was like, fuck this, I'm just gonna like listen to my.
Walk and smoke weed, smoke me hold my ship, smoke weed, suck my first dick, fall in love with my best friend and go figure skating, because that's something we got to do. At my camp, they had, you know, your day, split them into activities, and you have to sign up for activities every day. And one of the things we could do was take the camp vans to the local ice skating rink and you could either do figure skating or ice hockey. Do you want to guess which one
they did? Probably figure skating. I'm gonna guess trick question. I did both. I did both. Wait, wait, figure skating doesn't seem like something you would like. Were you good at it? I love figure skating.
I was not good at it, but I was, you know, I was like twirling while Drops of Jubiter was playing over the sound system.
Oh my god, not Drops of Jubiter. They were doing what's that Aerosmith song? I don't want to miss thing?
Remember we I didn't. I hated sports of any kind, so but yeah, I don't know what like summer camp they just they kind of Summer camps are like extremely gendered, but also I fear like two genderless, Like they really try and mesh boys and girls in like games of sports and like relay races and like high ropes courses, and it's like, actually, no, like we should be segregating genders and the girls should just do arts and I should be a girl like I. I do not want
to do the high rope scores. I don't want to do the sports. I don't want to do the manual labor like just like like shelter me, treat me like a fragile, little, you know, porcelain doll and never let me be in danger.
Sorry, no, I I agree, but a slight but from a slightly different angle. Because I was a fat kid obviously, so I hated playing sports. I was really bad at them. I was not I was an indoor kid, so I was always somewhere reading and or doing theater, or like at the Arts and Crafts building doing arts and crafts. I did not want to play sports, except when I was doing ice hockey and I was actually d.
Okay wait, I have no oh my god, the most visceral childhood slash teenage memories have like come back to me of probably my best year at Jesus Camp, wherein I did date that girl or try to date that girl, Ashley, and I was also madly in love with my best camp friend named Luke, who we were both so viciously closeted. He had bleach blonde hair and a mere apostle, plaid shorts and like you know those like canvas leather thongs, like pleather thongs, I mean for the the ones that
I was wearing in that. Yeah, honey, he was dressed. Oh my god, I hate that. I love it at summer camp. Okay, but I was going to ask you a question that would lead into my story. Did you get naked in the locker rooms? Was their nudity? No?
It was always like covering myself with a towel, changing, changing in the shower stuff.
The girls, other boys, the other girls, thanks for driving the other other boys they were oh no, they were walking around like fucking they didn't care. It was like, well, it was you know this thing that teen boys do where it's like it's engaged. You know, they're engaging. They're engaging in the most home erootic behavior, but like with
the most no homes. And it's honestly like the kids that were like grew up Christian had so much shame that we just like had our tidies, tidy whities, on for dear life and like not showering the entire week, because like that was like the most terrifying thing I could possibly in front of someone, like being naked. But to your point, all these other little everywhere, all these other little boys were like love to be naked, and
we're totally comfortable with it. And I remember enving them and being like why, Like why am I so afraid to be nude? But I rose seeing my crushes penises in this shower and like the feeling that that has it's like pool party. It's like pool party trauma, Like
it's so there's so much shame. But also I was so confused about what I was feeling, and like we were and the two of us, me and Luke were like so in the closet and so clearly into each other because we're spending every minute together and yet and I remember them being like they were like, why don't you get naked too? And I'm like, what the the homosociality of summer camp in general? Like what is that? It's so confusing? I don't know.
I mean, well, it's well, you're all going through puberty, it's very sexually charged. Everything is sexual. I actually I can't speak for anyone else, but after I went through puberty, I was under the covers fappen every night that blank That blanket could have been cracked in from all the
dry throat of the dry ye on it. Because I there was one summer that I found I was learning to play the drums in the band cabin, the band bunk or whatever, and I found a porn novel on the floor and I it gave me so much material to work with.
You love the written word, baby, I love the written word. To yank your crank too, baby, Uncle Ronnie do horties. You know, when you're at that like qu best and preps in age, like you're starting to make sex jokes. And even though we were at Jesus Camp, the kids would like make jokes and then the counselors would like yell at them. But mind you, the counselors are really only like seventeen, Like they're not even like of age. They're just like, you know, three or four years older
than the kids they are attending to. And like when you're that young, three to five years feels like twenty years, like they might as well be thirty something. Yeah, did any of the counselors that your camp fuck the campaigners because that that happened. Oh, oh my god, that's really fucked up. No, but one of them was, yeah, they used to get us if they used to get us
booze and they used to fuck. There were two that So the year that my favorite year at summer camp where I fell in love with Luke and Ashley, I also had two very transparently closeted gay counselors named Gloria and Kenny. And I remember Kenny yelling at these kids because like one of them was like under his cover and like proclaiming to the rest of the cabin that
he was like playing with himself. And I was like, this guy, you have like a like a kind of like exhibitionist like thing that you know you're going to discover later on in life. Yeah, wait, who are camp counselors? What? So did you ever become a camp counselor? Yes, but but never never for a summer camp. There were a couple years.
Where I was a camp counselor at like a winter break camp, but I was always more of a babysitter.
I did not do a lot of camp counselor ing. I was never a c T a counselor in training, but my younger brother was. At one point I was, and we still had to pay to be there. We had to pay a discounted camp rate to basically do essentially like free labor for the summer camp counseling these kids. And we like clean toilets and like did like cafeteria shifts, like what we had to pay to do that. It's crazy. But I was gonna say something that was very silly that I had to then do as a camp counselor
but also did as a camper. Was after I think I've already told you this before, after every single camp activity, whether it was like zipline, like doing tubing, the blob arts and crafts whatever, after tubing, after every activity, we would get in a circle, like our cabin would get in a circle, and we would talk about how that activity related to Jesus Christ. And it'd be like, so today today we're at the high robes chores, Like, how
is this like your relationship with Jesus? And I was like, Jesus is the ropes and gravity is the devil, and and you know if you fall, it's a sin. And like that's like what we had to do. We had to like metaphorize like every fucking thing we did, Like we were like, you know, eighth grade English students, and I hate I hated it. It was so forced. Wow, that's so lame.
The summer after my last year at Sleepway Camp, because you know, my brother was still going to camp and my mom obviously still wanted to get rid of me. During the summer, I did the sort of next level of camp, which is a teen tour. Do you know what a teen tour is?
Yeah? What is it?
So it's like a bunch of teenagers are sent on a trip. It's like traveling summer camp. So you're on a bus with a bunch of other teenagers and you go on like a pre selected route. So the teen tour I went on was all the West Coast, so we would go to like the national parks. We went to Stay Francisco, we went to La went to Salt Lake City, I think, and some of them are all camping,
some of them are all hotels. Ours was half and half and yeah, it's it's like summer camp on the road, and so it's like a little bit more grown up, and I felt very worldly. You know that I went and explored the other side of the country. And that's also where I made my first designer purchase ever, was in San Francisco. I went to the Louis Bauton store and bought a pair of slides with my mom's Target credit card that she had given me for emergency.
You were such a little brat like I was. Abe LV is like the Gateway luxury brand those But why those bags are hideous? I guess they are kind of like doniye Burk adjacent, Like they are so ugly that Midwestern moms like just have to have them. It's just about the label.
It's like the most it's the most visible logo of any you know, designer friend.
What when did you stop going to camp? Not soon enough? I actually don't know. I probably stopped when I was, like, I mean, definitely before I think my I think freshman year of high school maybe was my last year. Like I think that by the time I had entered high school, I had started to, you know, liberate myself a little bit. I was starting to think for myself. I was trying to,
you know, figure out who I was. And I think as a consequence of that I just hated church, hated Christianity, hated like being around church people, and was just pulling away from it as much as possible. So I did, you know, eventually stop going. But it felt so sad, like I felt, I feel like because I was such a I don't know what kind of like high.
School that you were, like, I was such a loser in school, like a loser, loser, loser until like pretty much my last two years of school before college and.
Summer camp is where I felt like I belonged, Like uh yeah, And you know why.
You know why that is because you get to lie about who you are because no, because no one goes to school with you, So you get to lie your ass off about your life and make yourself sound a lot cooler than you are. The only problem I ran into with that was that I had a younger brother who was always happy to contradict my lies and tell people what the truth was about my life.
EW I knowed I hate I mean, I I mean, I was like definitely in there being like, yeah, I'm straight, you gras, I'm totally a boy, you guys, But I feel like there is like I feel like I was ultimately actually trying to be myself because I couldn't be myself back at home in some way. So I am grateful to like have had that space in Summer camp.
And something else that's very specific to Jesus Camp that I don't know if you did a version of this, but every night, or maybe every other night, maybe we took a night off every other night or so, we would have like a kind of campfire moment where we would do like a little worship music and we would like do like an icebreak or something, and then we would take turns sharing our deepest, darkest trauma. And and literally,
I'm not joking, I'm not joking. It was like it was is honestly, it's honestly like the heart Circles of Beltane like it. But the way it was so methodical, like every single kid was required to have like a sharing moment at this campfire, and because of the prompts and like how it was set up to like you know, basically like asking about how you accepted Jesus in your heart and like what your like kind of biggest obstacle
was in it or whatever. These kids were like sobbing and talking about you know, when they were like abuse start like you know, like having sexual relations with older kids or like closet and like I never, you know, told him that I was gay, But I don't. I don't even remember, like what I had to lie about to like tell them what my trauma was. That's that's
when you that's when the stories came out. Like the kid I was, we never had to do any of that ship, but that would have been my moment to tell the most detailed, outrageous, unbelievable lie that I was, like so sure I was getting away with when everyone must have been like that kid's like he's her knees lying his head. Didn't even need to lie, you could just tell them like one. So from there.
But I loved lying. When I was a kid, I loved lying and I thought I was so good. I mean always I was, but I always added too much detail. But you know, the thing is kids are stupid, so they'll believe that too much detail. That's true, But the count and they knew what was up, and I was such I okay. So I always wanted to be friends
with both the older campers and the counselors. And I still cringe thinking about trying to make counselors like me and just what a loser I was, And Sphoebe said, this is why I have a podcast now, why Like because I was like a lying.
Loser making up stories. Wow, summer Camp is really dramatic. You know.
I'm I'm like glad that I went. I don't know, well, I'm not planning on having children. I don't know that I would send them to sleep Boy Camp if I were to have children.
Because.
Like I get needing the time off from being a parent, but also like you signed up.
For this, so it would depend on my partner. But if I have kids, they're going to boarding school. Yeah, I mean not boarding school. I wouldn't be that cruel, but yeah, I need a break, Like I don't want to see you for months at a time one hundred and ten percent otherwise like what am I going to do? Yeah?
I mean I feel like when my when my nephew is like a teenager and my brother and sister in law want to send him to camp, I'll be like, send him to York. He can stay with me for a couple of months and like have a you know, an experience. I think that would be but you know, they probably want to hang out with kids want to hang out with other kids weirdly enough, so he probably would rather.
I mean, I don't know, I just like, I know not every kid is like this, but like I craved time away from my parents, and you do the most growing up when you leave home, leave your parents, find a new context. Like it's just good for you and good for your soul and no, I just want to be around my mom MoMA. Girl.
Slide into our dms at Like a Virgin four twenty sixty nine. Let us know what's your favorite summer camp activity.
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Etur Bye Smell Ya later, Luke