Please see original story (www.nifty.org/nifty/gay/camping/canvas-hell/) for warnings and copyright. Highlights: All fiction. All rights reserved. Includes sex between young-adult men. Go away if any of that is against your local rules. Practice safer sex than my characters. Write if you like, but flamers end up in the nasty bits of future stories. Donate to Nifty TODAY at donate.nifty.org/donate.html to keep the cum coming.
My stress level went up and up and up as each fundamental truth about myself was challenged right there in the fortress of my own skull. Everyone's attention pulled tighter and tighter against me. The transition from waking fretfulness to fretful sleep was invisible to me. I was trapped, squeezed, pulped and smashed. I was suffocated, trapped, crushed. I struggled and could not move. I wanted to scream but had no voice. I wanted to cry but had no eyes or tears. I wanted it to stop and had no defenses left, each wall had been breached, shattered, obviated. I felt my last bit of breath leave me, my last desires fade, my last self-image melt away. My last thought -- I knew it to be the last thought I would ever have -- was simple and the final straw that broke me. 'I'm sorry, Jim.'
Canvas Hell 34: Eclosion
By Bear Pup
T/T; self-discovery - Saturday
"Karl, I'm worried." I heard the voice from the far-away place I now inhabited.
"Patrick?" snap-snap-snap of fingers, "You in there Patrick?"
"Oh, God, Karl. What's happening? What do we do?"
"Shower, maybe?"
"We can try."
I let my body help the voices as they dressed it and guided the body somewhere else.
My body helped them strip it and get it under a showerhead, lukewarm water washing across me.
"It's not working, Karl! What do we do?"
"I'll clean him. Get Eaglas. Meet at his office." I heard one of the voices scurry away.
"If you can hear me, Patrick," I was floating closer to the voice, "you're really freaking Jim out." The word, Jim, send me fleeing back to my cotton-wool world. I heard a deep sigh. "Well, Patrick, you gotta piss or you're gonna explode. Go ahead and I'll hold you up." I allowed my body to release and vaguely felt its relief. "Okay, Good." Suddenly, soapy hands were all over my body, moving me, manipulating me around, giving me a no-nonsense and very thorough washing.
I heard that voice wash himself, then he was drying me and dressing me again, guiding me somewhere else. A lower, stronger, older voice told us to come in and my body was settled on a soft chair or couch. A bright light hit my body's left eye and I felt my body flinch, and then did the same to the other. I could feel fingers at my body's wrist, throat, behind the ears.
"Jim, wait outside for a minute, please." I heard a whine and a whimper and then the door close. "Karl, what happened? Jim said he was like this just before bed and still this morning. The rest was a bit... confused. He's really shook up."
"Patrick heard someone refer to him as Red. I can't remember who. So, he found out that people talk about him, about me and him. It freaked us both out. Jim told us how and why, the whole Tent Nine Magic stuff and the stories, and I'm still a bit freaked. But Patrick said the 'Red' stories didn't bother him because it was just like a myth or legend. It wasn't about him, you know, but this fake Red. And then I, well, I probably said something stupid."
"That being?"
"Something like the guys don't make up Red based on Patrick, but that he's making up Patrick to pretend he's not Red."
The voices went quiet for a while. "Go keep Jim company. He needs it. If he's too worked up, go over into George's office and wait there. He'll need some comforting and you might not want the guys to see that. Tell him Patrick AND Red will both be fine. And what you said, Karl? It wasn't stupid. It was incredibly profound and extremely insightful. You did good, and you're a great friend and really good human being. A man and no mistake. Now git."
I heard the door close again, and a deep, long sigh. I heard a variety of odd noises and suddenly my body let loose a stomach-growl that sounded like a caged lion as the smell of bacon started to pervade the universe.
"Patrick, I know you can hear me even if you really don't want to. You can't just 'go away'; that's a thing from movies. Now, the trick is that I have a stove and a variety of yummy foods as well as my teapot. I can wait here until hell freezes over." The smell of bacon redoubled as I heard him turn the slices in his pan. "Now, I don't mind eating all this delicious bacon -- oh, and I'll be frying real eggs in a minute, too -- or you can stop this and talk to me. Your choice."
I considered but my body kinda rebelled, dragging me back against my will. There should be a Geneva Convention against using the smell of frying bacon on a teenaged bo-- young adult. My vision gradually cleared and the cotton-wool quality of sound faded away.
"Ah, bacon. The ultimate weapon. Good to see you joining the living again." I watched him lift bacon onto a paper towel and crack eggs into the grease, adding generous amounts of salt and pepper. He gingerly got a rasher onto a plate and put it on the desk; I pulled up a chair. It was blazing hot, crispy and juicy all at once. I chewed and stared at Dr Eaglas.
He took my plate back and dished out the eggs, yolks almost but not quite hard, exactly the way I do them when I cook for myself. He added half the bacon and pushed the plate back to me with a napkin and a fork, plating his own eggs and, to my amazed joy, restocking the pan with more bacon, the sizzle of which was the musical accompaniment to our breakfast.
He didn't' speak again until I was done and he dished out the second round of bacon. "So, you want to talk about this?"
I looked at him for a while. No, I really didn't want to talk about this. I thought of how best to phrase that so I could get out of the room. "Everything I knew about myself was wrong." Wait, what? His eyebrows went up, as did mine. I really had not intended to say that out loud. I blame the bacon.
"When Karl said, well, you know what he said. And that made me... go away, I guess is the best way to say it. It was that it made me really think about, well, everything. And I don't want to tell you it, but, well, I don't know what to think now. I don't kn-kn-kn-know who I am. I-I-I-I-I don't know anything!" I heard my voice climbing and could nothing to stop it.
Dr Eaglas came around the desk and pulled me over to the couch and he, well, he held me. I shook like I had fever-chills and he just sat there. The shaking passed and I finally looked up at him.
"The hardest part," he said, "of becoming a man is realizing that the 'you' that you knew isn't the same 'you' that you're becoming. Yes, I've heard the stories of Red and Karl; some of them are really funny, Patrick, and one day, far in the future, they'll be some of your cherished memories. But here and now, the idea that all these guys, most of whom you've never met, know you better than you do yourself is going to be painful."
"So wh-wh-what do I do?"
He pulled me closer. "Hell if I know, Patrick. I've done this for over a decade, and I've seen a lot of boys become men. Some seem like they're growing onto themselves, easy as putting on a new suit of clothes. For others, like you, Patrick, it's like being ripped apart and put back together." He hit it perfectly, that's what this was. I had been squashed to a pulp last night and was now trying to figure out where all the parts went.
"And I don't know how to make it easier. But I can tell you this -- you will survive it. You are an extraordinary young man, Patrick, and will be a truly great human being. Maybe, well, take my word for it at least for a few days and, perhaps, just try Red on for size?" He smiled, "Just like some wise you man told Tex?"
"You know about that?" I blushed. It was not my proudest moment.
"Of course, Patrick. And you know what? He tried on Tex and found it pinched in all the wrong places. But someone, some guy named Red, made him try again, this time as Trey. And I'm betting he'll be Trey for a lot of years." I just looked at him, doubtfully.
He chuckled, "I'll tell you a secret of my profession, and one you are learning here at Camp Sin: There is no advice that is harder to take than the good advice you give others. Jim, Karl, Nate, Trey, even Willie. You pushed them to be better than they thought they were, and they will remember that with thanks their entire lives. Now, your choice is to wimp out in exactly the way you wouldn't let them do," I scowled at him, "or tighten your belt and get out there, as Red, and see what happens."
I've dwelled on that conversation for decades, now, and I still cannot recall what (if anything) I thought as I stared at him. But I know what I did. I stood up, said "Thank you." and walked out. I went next door and found Jim in a right state and Karl trying to comfort him with absolutely no success. Nurturing was never really Karl's strong suit.
Jim went silent and his eyes went wide. Karl stared at me guardedly. "I'm sorry. To both of you. I -- I just got a verbal head-slap that made me realize how stupid I've been. Karl and Jim, you're both right. I was just too... too scared to let myself be better than I thought I was. I... I promise to try harder if you'll, well, help me?"
Jim flew at me, knocking me back a foot as he hugged me violently. His sobs shook my whole frame. Karl smiled slowly, "I think that's a yes."
We joined our respective, if rainy, Saturday Patrols a little late, but no one really noticed. Jim's Hygiene Patrol was working the Mess Hall that day. He told us later that he was shocked to find that it was really, really clean. Chef might hate all food (and kids) with a deep and abiding passion, but he ran a neat ship. Karl's Litter Patrol collected trash, much less this week as pretty much every cabin had a few guys on that patrol who made damned sure that anyone who threw trash around got an earful. My own Policing Patrol went off without bloodshed or serious injury (other than to a screen that my partner put a hammer through as we repaired a soffit).
We were wet and tired, but not overly damaged as we got back to the tent and made our way, for the second time, to the Hygiene Hut, not really because we needed to get clean, but because we needed to get warm. We weren't the only ones to make that choice; the place was packed. The showers, especially, were chaotic and a lot of backsides and frontsides bumped and brushed. Mine was not the only impending chubby that sent a kid rushing for the towelettes.
The difference today is that I chose not to hide. I just... showered. What dumbfounded me was how many of the guys around looked at me, not just there but in general. And they weren't sneering and smirking, just... I dunno. Like I was one of the jocks or the handsome guys you see in gym class sometimes. Like they were appreciative, maybe? Thus the quick exit, stage chubby. It gave me a lot to think about.
Lunch was...oh, God. The Campfire cooks had built something near and dear to anyone who'd been to Philadelphia to see the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall. Because afterwards, you always, always get a real, honest cheesesteak. They even had them labeled right, 'Wit' and Widout', and they had a guy behind the counter with a vat of Whiz and a pile of Provolone.
[ED: If you have been deprived the privilege of a real Philly cheesesteak, you order with three words. State quantity, type and cheese: e.g. One Wit Prov (one cheesesteak with fried onions topped with slices provolone cheese) or Two Widout Whiz (two cheesesteaks without fried onions topped with schmears of Cheese Whiz sauce). That said, why the fuck haven't you already been there? Sheesh! Get a Southwest flight, grab a cab and tell the taxi driver "9th & Passyunk". Ten to one he'll turn and say, "Cheesesteak?" as that corner has the two great masters of the Art of the Philly.]
For those into desecrating national monuments, they also had lettuce, tomato, mayo, sport peppers and even (horrors of horrors) mustard. The fries were shoestring thin and crisp enough to hold up to the ketchup. There was a cold option, a hoagie with Italian meats. I ended up with Two Wit Prov and a half-hoagie I split with a dubious Trey, "Why put cold cuts on a Po-Boy? It's like a long, boring Muffuletta."
The only thing they ran out of was fries, and they were universally (kinda) forgiven due to the exceptional sandwiches. The Major got up and announced that, as they had the day before, various leaders and staff would lead games and activities in the various covered spaces. Again, I refused to go into my normal head-down hunch and actually looked around me. I was astonished to find a number of guys who would smile when I met their eyes, or even wave and blush!
One in particular was whispering fiercely to Willie. The boy was between our ages, so probably fifteen or sixteen, and Willie was obviously pushing him. He kept glancing up and away and Willie finally sighed and pulled him over. As he unfolded himself from the table, I noticed he was nearly as gangly as I was. "Hey guys. Jim, this is my friend Larry who lives up the street in Bethlehem. You were in Cabin Four, weren't you? Before, you know."
"Hey, Larry. Yeah. Why?"
"And we," I noted a slice of priced in that word, "know Red and Karl, don't we?"
"Of course. We sing together. Red convinced you to do the solo and you're incredible. What's up?"
"Larry wanted to ask a question and is too chicken-shit to do it." The tall, lanky boy growl-grunted at the diminutive Willie who, shockingly, simply smiled back, completely unintimidated.
Larry finally looked at me and I noticed he was squinting a little. He blurted as if it were a single word, "HowCanYouBeCoolWithGlasses?" and then not only shut up, but stopped breathing entirely. Jim turned to me with a badly-concealed smirk.
"Sit down, Larry." He did, reluctance glowing from every pore. "First, I'm not cool. I'm just me. Second, I decided last year that I looked a lot stupider bumping into walls than I did with glasses. Where are yours, by the way?"
"M-M-M-M-M-Mine? Wh-Why do you think I w-w-w-wear glasses?"
I laughed, "Two reasons, Larry. One, you asked the question. Two, you're squinting to pretend you don't need them."
"Go ahead. Don't be a wuss. Put them on, Larry." Willie just called an older boy a wuss? What was happening to the Order of the Universe?
Larry fumbled in his shirt pocket and put on a pair of big-lensed, thin-framed glasses utterly unlike the dork-fest heavy, black plastic things I'd always lived with. "Wooooooow! Those are cool!" There was no way to disguise the honest interest in my voice. "Where did you get those. Can I try?"
Larry instantly whipped them off and handed them to me. I'd find out later when I went looking for them that they were called Aviator frames. An anachronistic note: I managed, I don't know how, to get my parents to spring for a pair that winter. I wore that style until the late 80s when semi-rimless came out. To me, then, they were a revelation. I put them on and laughed. "Damn, Larry, you're almost as blind as I am! Here." I shoved my own glasses and he acted like they were a holy relic. Yep, they looked just as horrible on him as they did one me. We swapped back.
"Hey, don't leave." He had started to rise. "Stick around. You seem like a really great guy, and if Willie knows you, I know you've got to be pretty cool." Larry blushed and Willie suddenly looked like a helium balloon. "You want anything? Another cheesesteak?"
"No, I'm stuffed. So, um, well..."
"Yeah?" I prompted.
"So, you guys really are just, like, regular guys? The Shrimp said so but I assumed he was just exaggerating as usual." Karl turned and his nostrils flared at the same time his eyes slitted and my face betrayed my lack of enthusiasm for his choice of words. Larry recoiled slightly and his eyes got wide.
"No! No, really," Willie jumped in, "he's always called me Shrimp and I call him Garfish. It's not an insult, really! I k-k-k-kinda like it. His brother is Flounder," he giggled.
Karl was still in Skeptical Bull mode. "You sure?" There was no possible doubt that tying this kid into a pretzel was clearly on the menu if Willie even gave a nod.
"He's, well, Larry's about my best friend." Willie's voice was small but certain. He gained a little pep, "Since we were kids, he made sure guys don't pick on me. Well, much anyway."
"Who picked on you?" Karl gave the entire Mess Hall a sweep as if he had a superpower of bully-detection vision.
"Oh, gosh, K-K-Karl. No one here! Back home."
Karl turned back to a completely-undone Larry. Karl reached his muscled, hairy arm across Trey's body and plunked his hand on Larry's shoulder. From the look on the boy's face, I think Larry's primary focus right then was not to pee his pants (too much). "Good then. Anyone who takes care of other kids is someone I want to know."
It looked like someone removed a significant portion of Larry's skeletal structure as relief washed over him. I spoke up. "In case you can't tell, Karl and Jim and I don't take well to bullies. Especially not anyone who bullies good men like Willie."
Larry's voice was still a little quaky, "Yeah. Everyone know about Winner's Gang, you know, the, uh, The Buggers? Can I, um, would you, well... what really happened?" he asked in a rush.
I turned to our resident storyteller, Jim, who did the zip-the-lip mime. I scowled. "Karl knew about them from Scranton. They messed with Jim, and Karl stood up to them and scared them off. They didn't want to mess with Karl so they went after Jim again and Winston -- his real name is Winston and he is nothing like a Winner at all -- tried to humiliate Jim again and got caught by the Major. Then the other two--"
"-- nasty freaking cowards --" Karl growled.
"-- tried to take it out on Jim the next day. Karl was going to, I dunno, kill people, so I got him and Jim out of the Mess Hall and we let the adults deal with it." Larry was looking completely unconvinced.
"And the ambulance and the stretchers? What about that, huh?" Every eye at the table, including those of Larry and Willie, swiveled to Jim who visibly shrank.
"Um, so if we're done anyone want to..." Jim's voice vanished as Karl growled again and I got a grip on his shoulder.
Karl's low rumble brooked no contradiction. "No ambulance. No stretchers. No COMAS," he shot at Jim's wilting frame. "Just we stood up for Jim and let the adults do their jobs. Isn't that right, JIM?" Jim nodded miserably.
Larry smiled at Jim's obvious discomfiture. "I kinda liked the coma part, really. Beating them with a tree -- isn't that right, Jim? -- was also a really satisfying touch." He started to laugh and everyone joined in, those close enough literally ribbing Jim who sat sulking.
"You're an okay guy, Larry." I said. "Sit with us at dinner?" He smiled widely then frowned.
"What about The Shr--- Willie?"
"We've invited him about every meal. We're not cool enough, apparently," I teased. "But with you upping the cool factor, maybe we can finally get onto his good side?"
Larry and Willie stuck with us the rest of the day. We decided against Tent Canvas Hell and went to the cabin with the board games. We ended up in a rather-heated five-way Monopoly game. Trey and Nate had opted for Chess, which they both liked, leaving five combatants. I was, naturally, the first to fall. The game finally narrowed to a blood-feud between Jim (naturally) and a surprisingly-subtle Larry. They shook hands and declared a tie rather than have all of us suffer through the inevitable hour-long war of attrition with which every Monopoly games ends.
We migrated to the Storytelling session in Dr Eaglas' office and listened to a few rather lame ghost stories. The doctor himself gave a really chilling version of The Bound Boy that was kinda spoiled by his inability to use outdoor visuals. About the tenth time Jim kicked me in the butt I decided to try one I'd been thinking about the night of the Sq-Sq-Sq-Squirrel, The Last Tihoti.
I started with a simple introduction. "Hey, I'm Patrick. I'm in Tent Nine. I'm not good at ghost stories, but I'm pretty good with history. I'm a nerd, you know?" That got a chuckle which really emboldened me. "I don't have a ghost story, but a weird one from Indian times. You want to hear it?" I got a round of nods.
"So, before the Revolution, there was a guy named Bishop Cannerloff -- I might have that wrong, he was something of a pri- um, an uptight person --" I shot a glance to Dr Eaglas who simply smiled. "who wrote home about a tribe who spoke Tehotachsee. Not a decade earlier, their main city, their capital, a place called Gohontoto was destroyed with all their chiefs by the Susquehannock. All except one medicine man, a powerful one named Tsin-a-ma-hon, or Sinnemahon."
"Wait, like the river and Camp Sinnemahoning?" one of the boys interjected.
"Exactly. So this medicine man--"
"Okay, wait. I'm calling this one," an older boy interrupted with a wide smirk. "I think it's made up. Dr Eaglas, you're the referee here. What Say Thee?" I didn't know there was such a thing as a referee but looked to the doctor like everyone else.
Mouth partially obscured by the hand in which his chin rested, he replied with a bit of caution and reflection. "I'll admit I haven't heard this, but I can confirm a little of it. Just about everything we know about early Indians comes from religious people, so the Bishop part makes sense. A tribe that spoke, I think, Tahotitahatchsee, lived someplace around here. And their main village really was called something like Gohontoto. I know the camp and the river are named for an Indian, and it might well be a medicine man. Overall, I'd say it sounds real, guys."
[ED: The Bishop's named was Cammerhoff and the tribe's language was Tehotitachsae. If you want a copy of the ghost story, e-mail the author].
"Like I said, I am terrible at telling stories. I just thought you guys might like some history of the area." I proceeded to spin a yarn about the (completely made up) immortal Sinnemahon and his murderous revenge on those who killed off his people, and anyone else who settled in the area. Lots of gruesome diseases and unexplained and gory deaths, all that.
"Anyway, the reason I mention it is that this Bishop Cannerloff said, 'Above all else, we must not settle on the Island of the Three Hills. The selfsame place that the ignorant say this medicine man dwells, coming back every decade to wreak his vengeance. Tis naught but superstition, but why tempt the Lord's infinite mysteries?' I don't know what he meant, but I've been thinking. This is kind of an island, right, and it has exactly three hills? I'm sure it doesn't mean anything, really. Just an old story. But, I mean, three hundred years? And it never went away. Weird, huh?"
I looked around at a small sea of wide, worried eyes, yielding the floor to a guy a year younger who is a superb version of One Eyed Jack. Dr Eaglas winked at me, a wink I treasure to this day. I looked around and realized, every eye had been on me, and no one smirked or yawned or shied away. It was... like I really had been reborn as a new person, perhaps even as Red.
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Active storelines, all at www.nifty.org/nifty/gay... Canvas Hell: 34 chapters .../camping/canvas-hell/ Beaux Thibodaux: 25 chapters .../adult-youth/beaux-thibodaux/ The Heathens: 26 chapters .../historical/the-heathens/ Lake Desolation: 19 chapters .../rural/lake-desolation/ Culberhouse Rules: 9 chapters .../incest/culberhouse-rules/ Raven's Claw: 9 chapters .../authoritarian/ravens-claw/ Ashes & Dust: 4 chapters .../rural/ashes-and-dust/