The summer camp staff of The Pines gathered in Central Square in June, on the first Sunday following the end of school. The campers, all boys in their early adolescence, wouldn’t arrive until the week following. The seven intervening days would be used to make preparations. There was a lot for them to do.

But first, they had to get there. The senior staff brought their cars to supply transport for the rest. Members of the junior staff, fifteen and sixteen year olds, along with their foot lockers, were dropped off by parents.

Two cars and three station wagons, stuffed with kids, boxes tied to their tops, left for the hour and a half trip. The drivers were the camp director, the activities director, the waterfront director and the assistant waterfront and activities directors. The youngsters, many of whom had not seen each other since the end of last summer, were noisily catching up on the major events in their respective lives.

So time passed quickly and soon they found themselves going through the camp gate, up the inclining dirt road and through a stand of tall pines to the parking area. People kept spilling out of the vehicles like clowns from a tiny circus car. To each of them, the setting and the buildings seemed strange for a good half hour, before the familiarity built up in prior years took over.

The immediate task was to get the rowboats out of the mess hall, where they had been stored, and down the steep bank to the lake. Three boys to a side were required to make each portage over a slope gnarled with roots. At the bottom there was a launching dock that slanted nearly to the level of the water. From there the boats were tethered along the bank where they would soon sink from having dried out over the intervening months. Later they would be hauled up, emptied of water, and moored to a boat dock that the waterfront staff would install in a day or two.

By the time the rowboats had all been carried away it was time for a lunch of cold cut sandwiches. The first hot meal wouldn’t be served until that evening, after the KP crew had scrubbed the kitchen and everything in it. Not a crumb was left; the men and youths were hungry.

*****

After lunch, the boys are organized into work details. The toilets are cleaned and stocked with supplies, also the Infirmary. All the benches and tables in the mess hall are taken out and washed. The floor is mopped. The details are reorganized into three boy groups. Each team is assigned a cabin to open and clean.

Tommy, Hawke and Fitz are given the White Birch cabin. Fitz is short for Fitzgerald. Only Tommy, a new boy on the staff, goes by his first name. Last year, he was himself a camper and knew the other two as cabin leaders. This season he will be a cabin leader, but he doesn’t feel like one yet.

The wooden cabins are dark brown in color. The shutters have to be unfastened and raised, exposing the large screened openings. Some of the ten bunks are merely canvas stretched on poles. There are two single steel frame cots and, at the far end of the cabin, one iron bunk bed. These are equipped with old, thin, blue stripped mattresses.

These and the canvases are brought outside into the sun and air to reduce, if not remove, their musty smell. The shelves between the bunks are dusted; the floor is swept and then mopped. The line for drying bathing suits is strung at the back of the cabin and the two fire buckets that hang on supports are filled with water. The canvases are bought back in and hung; the mattresses are replaced on the bunks.

Then the boys bring in their personal gear. This is the cabin they will stay in for the next few nights. Two others join them. One is on the kitchen staff for the summer, the other is his brother, who is only going to be in camp for this one workweek.

They don’t look much like brothers. Brian is much shorter than his olive skinned, dark haired, handsome, younger sibling, Jeremy. The older brother is light blonde and fair skinned, boyishly good looking. That one or both are adopted doesn’t occur to Tommy.

The brothers and the two experienced staff members take the iron beds with springs and mattresses. This leaves Tommy with one of the canvas bunks. He doesn’t care and throws his sleeping bag into the top right one at the door end of the cabin. The canvas sags some six inches down the middle and ripples slightly on receipt of the bundle.

*****

After dinner, the staff plays its usual Sunday evening volleyball game. It’s the senior staff against the junior staff. There are too many juniors to play all at the same time, so Tommy sits out at first. Fitz and Hawke are in the game. They are both taller than Tommy.

Fitz is just a big kid, but Hawke has his man’s face already. He seems nearly as mature as the younger members of the senior staff. Even so he is not the leader of the juniors, acknowledged or otherwise. There isn’t any. That is one reason why the senior staff almost always wins the volleyball games. Their greater experience and better organization make up for enthusiasm, energy and reserve players.

After the game they go for a swim to wash away the sweat and dust. It’s a quick dip, owing to the early summer cool of the water and the evening air. Modestly, they all wear bathing suits, as is customary at The Pines.

Once back at the White Birch cabin, Tommy, exhausted by the days activities and soothed by the water, goes straight to bed. The other four boys decide to stay up and play nickel-penny poker by flash light. They haul a footlocker to the side of a cot and use it as a table. Two boys sit on the bed and the other two are on the floor. The younger boy hears their voices, quiet for the most part, through a haze of increasing drowsiness.

*****

A bit of song registers in Tommy’s mind. It is Brian’s voice, but he doesn’t catch the words. He is too near sleep. Then it comes again, the same short bit. A minute later, the youth sings it again. This time the lyric penetrates.

“Feet in the air, pat him on the po-po.”

Lazily and remaining in his fog, Tommy wonders what it means. It sounds vaguely sexual, po-po must be bottom; must be a boy’s bottom.

“Feet in the air, pat him on the po-po.”

He hears Hawke’s voice. “Are you serious?”

“Why not?” Brian says. “He wants it.”

Maybe they are talking about him, Tommy thinks. But instead of this thought making him alert, it has the opposite effect. His mind goes into a sort of hypnotic state, clear of everything except the boys’ voices. He remains on the verge of sleep.

“What makes you think so?” Fitz asks.

“He may not know he wants it, but he wants it,” Brian asserts.

Two questions arise in Tommy’s mind. What is it and does he want whatever it is?

“Well, you would know,” Hawke says.

“Exactly,” Brian responds.

“Feet in the air, pat him on the left nut.”

Uncertainty about the proposed activity being sexual is banished from further consideration by the boy in his bed.

“How would we do it?” Jeremy inquires.

“Put one of the mattress on the floor,” Brian advises.

“And take turns?” Fitz suggests.

Tommy, suddenly, feels quite light headed. The mental haze thickens.

“Sort of. I was thinking …, we could put him on his hands and knees. I could go in the back door and when I’m in, raise him up. Then Jeremy could go in the front,” Brian proposes. “Then you two do the same.”

“Which end do you want?” Hawke asks.

“The mouth,” Fitz answers.

The words, back door and front door, take on new meanings. Tommy imagines feeling certain sensations that he has never experienced, other than in fantasy. They almost take on shapes in his brain.

“Suits me,” Hawke allows.

“We need some stuff,” Brian remarks.

“Like what?” Jeremy questions.

“Something for lubrication, for one thing. Um, a couple of towels from the lost and found box and some water. One of the fire buckets would do,” Brian lists.

The admonition, one can never be too clean, pops into the youngster’s thoughts. What a silly thing to think of, he thinks. The phrase floats away.

“There’s some vegetable oil in the kitchen,” Jeremy says. “Will we do it by flashlight?”

“Turn them all off,” Brian orders. “No, there’s enough moonlight. Keep quiet too. We’re not trying to attract an audience.”

“And don’t be rough with him,” Brian admonishes. “Make sure he gets off too. Tomorrow do him favors, look out for him, be his friend. You know, if you treat him right, you can probably mess around with him all summer.”

Tommy hears footsteps and the screen door of the cabin opens and closes. Feelings of apprehension and fascination dance in his head like a pair of moths near a flame. He hears the sound of a mattress being slid from its lattice of steel strips and springs, a plop when the free end hits the floor, the whisper of fabric dragged across a wooden floor. His mind turns further inward, consciousness is nearly blotted out.

*****

The boys return, one by one. They strip down to their briefs, kept on at Brian’s command. He thinks that a first view of four erections might be excessively alarming.

Brian goes over to Tommy’s bunk, reaches over the wooden pole and unzips the kid’s sleeping bag. He rouses the youngster by shaking a shoulder, says, “Come down.” A sleepy boy sits up and accepts Brian’s help in moving his legs over the edge and hands under the armpits for the descent.

Brian moves behind Tommy in order not to block the view of the other three. His hands go around the youth to unbutton the boy’s pajama top. He slides it off the kid’s shoulders, and then lowers the bottoms. Fitz notices the boy’s thinness and a blue vein that travels across a bony hip. The kid seems to be in some kind of trance.

*****

In the days that followed, Brian left for home, Jeremy was busy with his duties, and Fitz was just not very interested in sex with a boy. Hawke was another matter. The first week of the season, Hawke and Tommy took a group of boys on an overnight hike and campout. That night Tommy learned the meaning of the “feet in the air” part of Brian’s ditty.

Once a week, at campfires, the junior staff put on skits to entertain the boys. A closet full of old clothes served as the costume department. Hawke and Tommy would play the male and female leads. The younger boy would put on a dress and stuff the bodice with rags. Everyone thought it was a hoot.

At the end of summer, the romance ended, along with thousands of other teenage affairs. Hawke lived in the next town and gave Tommy no indication of any intention on his part to remain a couple. The boy accepted this as the usual lack of control that a kid has over his life.

*****

The third week of high school, a boy who had not previously paid much attention to Tommy suddenly wanted to be his friend. Jordan’s family, unlike Tommy’s, belonged to the country club and the yacht club. Although they had been in many of the same classes since junior high, Jordan had kept his distance.

The youth asked Tommy to be his lab partner in Biology. He proposed that they do their math homework together and offered his house as the location. Soon Tommy was there most weekday afternoons and the occasional evening or Saturday. He met Jordan’s parents, who impressed him with their cordiality.

Jordan invited him to one of his parties on a Friday night. Tommy felt a little out of place with the other boy’s set. They seemed more sophisticated and sure of themselves than he did. Jordan’s mother asked him to lunch the following day.

After lunch, Jordan’s father said that he would like to have a chat with him in his study. They sat on a leather covered sofa and looked out through French windows at the beautifully tended lawn and gardens at the back of the house. Mr. Morrison was a taller, more distinguished version of Jordan.

“It seems we have a mutual friend,” he began. “John Hawke thinks very highly of you. And Jordan says that you are one of the brightest students in his class.” The man paused momentarily.

“I like to help out a worthy young person from time to time. Introduce him to the right people; make sure that he gets all the opportunities in life that my own son enjoys. Be a mentor, in other words.”

This time, Tommy knew at once what was going on. For some reason, Hawke had told Mr. Morrison that he was available for sex. Probably he and Hawke had done something together in the past. Mr. Morrison asked his son, Jordan, to get chummy and probably gave him this “mentor” business as the reason.

*****

After Princeton, Tommy joined an important firm on Wall Street. With the support of one of the partners, he advanced rapidly. It wasn’t Mr. Morrison, whose business was in Boston and who preferred his protégé’s to be under the age of eighteen.