This One Time at Camp... Tales of Same-Sex Summer Lovin'

As students, teachers, and parents prepare for the bustle of the Back-to-School season, we thought our readers could use just a few more moments to spend lounging in the late-afternoon summer sun, sharing a cold drink with a hot woman, and reliving the glorious days of summer camp gone by. 

We asked SheWired writers and readers to submit their most fond memories of same-sex seduction that took place at camps attended in summers past. Sleepaway camp, day camp, Girl Scout camp — any kind of camp was on the table. And as usual, our supporters delivered. Read on to find sweet, sexy, and silly stories reminiscing on the first time these contributors laid eyes (and sometimes more) on another girl who made their adolescent hearts flutter. Just think of these as the sapphic version of the iconic "This one time, at band camp…" If that phrase ended with, "I realized I was a lesbian."

Let's kick off our campfire story hour with an excellent tale from SheWired's own editor in chief, Tracy Gilchrist — who looked like this when she attended Girl Scout Camp:

Where the Girls Are

By Tracy Gilchrist

There was no one time at Girl Scout Camp. There were lots of times at Girl Scout Camp. Beginning from age seven until I was 14, for two weeks a summer, I learned to make a one-match fire, sing every word of "Puff the Magic Dragon," and bake lasagna over a fire in a Dutch oven (yeah, that’s what it was called) in this magical place in the woods of northwest Connecticut run entirely by women. There were men on the periphery, but Camp Maria Pratt’s all-female staff of strong capable women taught me at an impressionable age that women — that I — could do anything. And then came the crushes — on counselors, on campers, and later, when I was full-fledged counselor in training and then camp counselor, on the counselors again. 

At some point in my development I realized that Girl Scout Camp did not make me gay, but it sure did speed the process. I mean, where else could I hug another girl for minutes on end and no one would think twice about it? And somehow, it was just so much nicer than those errant fumblings I’d had with adolescent boys (at least for me).

Of course, those extended hugs did eventually lead to heartache one summer when I was 12, in the unit we called Indian Rock. I had attached myself to a new favorite counselor from whom I stole hugs and handholds every chance I got. One night, she told me she wasn’t "queer." I was 12, but I knew what she meant. I had been rebuffed and I cried a lot the rest of that session. 

But like any good budding lesbian, I didn’t allow that early rejection to keep me down. My last summer as a camper, I became exceedingly close to another camper — a preppy private-school girl who spent every session at camp, so she got a lot of attention from all of the counselors, and I was jealous. But somehow, she and I bridged that jealousy into a full-on mini obsession. We spent my two weeks there that summer crammed together in a single cot. Nothing more than requisite hugging, handholding, and snuggling happened, but a line had been crossed for me. She was my first love. 

Fast forward to the summer of 1986. I was 18 and I’d been out of high school for a year and even did a stint in the Navy Reserves. I was a counselor — an assistant unit leader in fact — and during staff training that year I fell for two women: one an out and proud bisexual freebird with hippy parents who lived in the gay section of Hartford, and the other, a deeply closeted preppy private-school girl (this time, from a private women’s college). When girlfriend number one was sent home for the summer for harboring a bong for a camper (I did not approve of this), girlfriend number two and I fell hopelessly, if not secretively, in love. She became my first real girlfriend, although she never did come out about our relationship that went on for 10 months. 

Then there was Exchange Counselor Girlfriend from England, number one. That was the summer of 1990. A perfect summer that could have been frozen in time with me and her and all of our friends skinny-dipping in Whist Pond on our off hours. On the final night of serenading at camp, she stared uncharacteristically teary-eyed at me from across the campfire as I crooned "Leaving on a Jet Plane." Did I mention I could carry a tune? It was one of my best assets at camp — that and the one-match fire making skills. She and I had the perfect summer, and she was going to be leaving on a jet plane for 3,000 miles away. We reveled in those John Denver lyrics.  It was sad, and awful, and also kind of beautiful (or so my 22-year-old brain thought). 

I skipped camp for several years in the '90s. I had to grow up sometime, right? There were so-called real jobs that filled my time during those summers, but in those early post-camp years there was always a void. I returned to camp in the summer of ’97. My dear friend — a counselor on whom I’d developed a massive crush at the tender age of 7 — had become the camp director. I returned as a camp administrator. I wasn’t looking for it, but there she was on the front porch of the lodge on the final day of staff week — Kate from Brighton, England. She was the last staff member to arrive, and she was breathtaking — a 5' 11" Minnie Driver look-alike in short shorts staring at me across a circle of people as we practiced the Mexican Hat Dance (I can’t make this stuff up). Kate and I fell in love. 

I know, so many loves. I was lucky. I had a lot of love when I was young. Eventually, she moved to the U.S. and we began an embittered battle against the so-called Defense of Marriage Act to be together. We didn’t win. Not back then. After three years of fighting, tears and heartache, we called it quits. We remained the best of friends though, and the good news is that she and her American wife can apply for a visa now. 

It’s been 15 years since I set foot in camp, but when July rolls around and I’m stuck in an office missing that unforgettable olfactory mélange of camp fire, bug spray, and kerosene I often catch myself singing, "Mmm, I want to linger / Mmm, a little longer, mmm / a little longer here with you."

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(Tainted) Love In The Digital Age

By Bethany Tucker

Like a lot of kids I went to summer camp. Not the all-summer-long type of summer camp, the two-week-away-from-home, task-specific-camp. Basketball camp, tennis camp, computer camp, and yes, even band camp — I went to all of them. It was at computer camp way back in 1981 (I went to learn BASIC) that my life was forever changed by a girl named Gretchen.  

Gretchen was 16 and I was 13. She was blonde, way into the punk scene, and like no one else I had ever met. She was a free spirit — she did what she liked, when she liked, with no rules, and no regard for authority. She was so frigid' cool and I followed her like a little puppy dog.  

This particular summer camp was run by a local college, and all of the campers stayed in the dorms and ate at the student cafeteria. Gretchen and I had just returned to the dorm from the cafeteria when the song "Tainted Love" came on the radio from a room at the end of the hall. 

Gretchen turns to me and screams, "Come on Bethany, I LOVE this song!"  She then grabs my hands, drags me down the hall, flings open the door and runs inside — much to the surprise of the guy whose room it was. 

Once inside the room, she slowly unbuttons her shirt and starts doing the most seductive dance that my 13-year-old eyes had ever seen. Hips grinding, arms flowing, she danced all around me.  

I would love to say that I danced with her — oh heck, I would love to say I did so much more with her — but in reality I just stood there. I stood there with my eyes wide and my mind racing in a combination of fascination and new-found teenage lust.  

The song ended, Gretchen grabbed my hands again, drug me into the hall, and buttoned her shirt. When she finished she put her hands on ether side of my face, kissed me on the forehead and said, "That was so much fun, thanks for coming with me. Bethany."

I don't think that Gretchen was gay. I think she was just 16 and crazy fun, but from that moment something that I had only suspected about myself became crystal clear. There was no way I was ever going to feel the same fascination and tingling with boys that I did with a girl like Gretchen. 

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A Tent of Their Own

By Anonymous

MJ was my first girl-crush that I got to do anything about. Our parents were friends, but we really didn't know each other until I was sent to the overnight summer camp she went to at their recommendation — Camp Palawopec. It was an all-girls camp, and after that first summer it was the best two weeks of my life every year, primarily because I could be with her.  

She was everything I wasn't — blonde, blue-eyed, wiry, strong and fast, super smart, and braver than anyone I knew. I loved her freckles, and the mischievous twinkle in her eye before she concocted one of her schemes, like tricking one of the preppy girls to take off her swimsuit in the water and then stealing it.  

At Camp Palawopec, we stayed in old army tents with bunks, sleeping six to 20 campers. When I was nine and she was 10, she started choosing the smallest, farthest away tent for us, called "Deer Trails."  It was barely within earshot of the other tents, on the other side of a ravine traversed by a long, swinging bridge. 

They tried to put other girls in the tent with us, but their parents usually moved them after they saw it. One young camper stuck it out for a few days — until we scared the shit out of her by pretending there was a ghost on the bridge, then jumping out at her as she went across in the dark. Lord knows where our councilor, Maria, was most of the time. Probably shtupping her boyfriend. So it was often just MJ and me.

MJ always wanted a top bunk, so I always took the one under her, even though there was usually another whole empty bed there. I would have liked to be on the top bunk, but it didn't even cross my mind — I was in her bed. The metal frame would creak and sway when she moved around; we were usually completely exhausted at night, but sometimes I would lie there, scratching my mosquito bites, looking up at her mattress and thinking about her. 

Some of the girls liked to talk about boys, but not us. We were too busy swimming in the lake, making crafts, and going on various adventures the camp cooked up for us: overnight trips on horseback, or maybe spelunking. 

I know now that MJ was also my ears; due to chronic ear infections, my hearing was very poor and I missed a lot. I felt like I was never quite sure what was going on, so I clung to MJ and just did what she did. This usually worked great, except for the time that suddenly she and most of the kids at the camp were missing for a few days. Turned out they had gone on a canoe trip. I missed her horribly, but was even more pained that she hadn't brought me to wherever she had gone.

After we started going to camp together, our families seemed to get together more often during the year, even though she didn't live in the same city as we did. Because her family would be coming in from out of town, this often meant that we got to have sleep-overs.  

During one such visit, our families went to a restaurant together. As we waited to be seated, MJ took me to an isolated area of the bar; she had something important to share with me and I couldn't wait to hear it.  

"We're lesbians!" she exclaimed, waiting for my reaction. Having never heard this word before, I had none, but waited for more information. Clearly disappointed, she continued.

"It means that we like girls, not boys" she said in a whisper. I responded that I didn't dislike boys.

"No, I mean, LIKE, in that special way — touching and stuff," she continued, becoming annoyed. I didn't want to disappoint her, so I nodded, even though I still didn't know what she was talking about. She said she would show me that night.  

My bed at home was a very solid, built-in wood bunk-bed with full mattresses- plenty of room for her and me to be on the top together (finally!). My younger brother was on the lower bunk, but could have been on another planet for all I cared. He was a sound sleeper, and I had no idea what MJ had planned for us.

She began with a little role-play in which I was a reporter and she was a famous stripper I was interviewing. She had to explain "reporter" and "stripper" to me, as well as feed me most of my lines. Soon, she instructed me to get on top of her, but as I had no idea what we were doing, she quickly reversed the roles so as to lead better. 

I was surprised at what I was feeling — like scratching a very itchy mosquito bite but even better… and the more we rubbed, the better it felt. At some point, everything got hot and we moved frantically against each other... I never wanted anything more in my whole entire life. 

I would chase that feeling, trying to recreate it, for many years afterwards by teaching others, but tribbing was never quite like that again.  

The next year at camp, I literally ached for her the whole two weeks, but she never initiated play like that together there, even in our remote Deer Trails cabin. It was that year that I realized what a "bad girl" she was, and that my following her was what kept me out of the mini-honor society at the camp. 

I believed that what we had done together was horribly shameful, and that I should tell no one about it. I felt even worse that I wanted more of it. My mother was surprised that I didn't want to go back to that camp after that. I went to a co-ed, religious camp a couple years later, where I had a very pretty boyfriend, but I just couldn't get very excited about him.   

Today, MJ is a happily married heterosexual, and I wonder if she even remembers those years that were so formative for me. As for me, I'm a happily married lesbian and at peace with my sexuality. I'm grateful to Camp Palawopec and to MJ for a peaceful, safe start to my sexual development, even if it couldn't shelter me from the homophobia of the times.

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Mesmer-ASS-ed

By Michelle Garcia

I didn't get to go to sleep-away camp. That was way too pricey for my parents. Summers during the first couple of my years of childhood were spent at Camp Nana — as in, my grandmother took us to eat hot dogs in Central Park, or over to her friends' houses to play in the streets of Brooklyn while they gossiped, devoured boxes of Entenmann's, and puffed Viceroys all afternoon. But after Nana died, I somehow convinced my parents to spend thousands of dollars each summer to send me and my sisters to day camp. 

At age 15, I became a Counselor in Training. That's where I started working with Christie. Even in her camp staff t-shirt and basketball shorts, she was more glamorous and beautiful than any girl at my high school on their best day. She had long, glossy brown hair, pouty lips, velvety chocolate skin, and a butt that entranced all those who locked eyes with it. So naturally I hated her. 

Who did she think she was, being so beautiful at summer camp?! How dare she look gorgeous without even trying! Didn't she know I was supposed to be the cute one?! But over the summers, she and I became friendly — we were good Catholic girls who had to form an alliance against the pervy dudes we worked with. 

She and I lived in the same neighborhood, and since those pervy guys all had cars and we didn't, she came over to my house so we could get picked up to go Cosmic Bowling. What? it was 2001! 

So we waited outside of my apartment building. Fifteen minutes go by. Twenty minutes. Twenty five minutes. And suddenly, Christie had to pee. We were waiting outside, and my apartment was all the way up two flights of stairs. So Christie stood in the gutter between two cars, dropped her pants, squatted a little, and peed. Right in front of me. She was five feet away from me, and she just let it go on my street in suburban Queens, her butt fully exposed to me. I was literally entranced by her butt. I could not look away, and I think she liked that I couldn't look away. Twelve years later, the image is burned in my brain. It's not like I now have a pee fetish, but it was one of the most intimate things I had seen at that point. 

Eventually those pervy dorks showed up in their cars and whisked us away to Chelsea Piers for a couple of rounds of Fad bowling. But the rest of the night, all I could think about was that the hottest girl in camp peed in front of my apartment building. 

Have your own summer lovin' story to share? Send it to SheWired's associate editor at Sunnivie.Brydum@advocate.com. 

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