Summer camp is divided into two categories: the naked, sexy people, and the desolate priest boys. The naked, sexy people are thin and they have wide shoulders. Their asses are uncovered, round and attractive to all. They lay on rocks. When they are bored, they jump into the sea. They’re the kind of clique that doesn’t care about being friendly, and they certainly know how to have a good time.
      The desolate priest boys lurk among different rocks that hang on different seas. In granite caves dug by priests for themselves and their young campers. In the dark dwellings, the priests light candles and show the boys pictures of everything they shouldn’t do. They shouldn’t eat, they shouldn’t laugh. They should not touch each other, like this, in these pictures, look.
      On lecture days, the teachers arrive. They can barely slide through the cave’s entrance as it was built for children and priests only. They crouch at their desks trying to bring information to the boys from other worlds. It is useless. The priests, who don’t allow the children to see the light of day, will get their way. They will wait for each teacher to be done with their lecture, so they can take their hands out and sink them into fresh boy skin. The teachers try to get the children out: “Come to the naked, sexy people summer camp and dive from other rocks on other shores!” But the children are too sullen to reply. Their last option, as a way to get out of the cave, is to make themselves tiny, almost invisible.

 

 

 

 

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This story originally appeared in Sister Stop Breathing (Calamari Press, 2012). Photograph by Raegan Bird.