Twelve Steps To Marriage (Step 4)

STEP 4    The Camp Nurse   "Gail"


So I'm waiting around for the end of the semester......Pittsfield is well "the Pitts".......and I am dreaming about going to the Universityof Massachusettes@Amherst  in the fall.....and I get a suprise visit from an old friend Danny Shornstein from SUNY Geneseo, a fraternal twin in fact, who after three years is finally taking me up on my offer to work with him as a Maintenance Manager at his mother's Summer Camp "Johnny Appleseed" in Brandon Vermont........

I hadn't many plans for the Summer....in fact I had none........so I agreed to go up early to Vermont and once again as part of a "Super Staff" to help open  two dozen cabins, two kitchens, an infirmary, administrative office, and to put out the docks, prepare the stables etc....but this time it was for only 150 Staff and Campers, there was plenty of help, and plenty of women....

At the time my friends mother was one of only two female Camp Directors in the American Camping Association. Starting as a small baby sitting operation.....Dianna parlayed her gig into a full sized inter-racial Summer Camp Operation........and she had been doing it for twenty years now........the idea was to give the Camp to her son Dan who had been trained as a song leader and could lead a group of one hundred people in circles like the pied piper, and her daughter Amy who was good at "socializing" and cooking............he would learn to run and manage tthe finances, and deal with the kids, and I would help with the physical plant, the maintenance and daily administration....It was to be a six month a year job forever....and as a surrogate mother Dianna was providing me with what I needed most, emotional support, hard work, and a plan.

Dianna was like three credits short of a PHD......a PHD in Psycho-Analysis.......and she could be very shrewd.....she would have the Staff meet at night and encourage them all "to fuck one another"! And she wasn't kidding....she really believed a Happy Staff would lead to a Happy Camp.........she insisted on weekly encounter groups......she would practice her therapy on all of us, sitting us down in two chairs opposite one another and having us role play the different people in our lives........very "jungian".....

Her son Dan was incredible....he had spent his entire life at camp with his Mom....and he knew how to handle a crowd......he played a sweet guitar and he could lead a sing-along with a crowd of kids or adults around the camp fire like no one I had ever known.......we were as close as brothers can get .........

Well we are into the fifth week of camp and into the month of August before you know it.....some kids
have been getting stung by a bunch of yellow jackets and I notice a large Bee-Hive in a tree above my maintenance shack.

I get a long pole, wrap it with a towel, wire and cover the towel with screening material, soak it in kerosene,
light it and start burning down the Bee-Hive......30 feet in the air.......It's going pretty well and I am thinking
about how smart I am when just then I feel a sting on my left hand.......actually it feels like a dozen  stings.

I drop my torch, look down at my hand just into time to see some burning flesh above my thumb go up in smoke. In less time than it takes to shake a stick at a Bee...I have second and third degree burns on 4 square inches of my left hand........I am screaming...........

I run in to the infirmary...........their was a new camp Nurse that month......I hadn't met her yet....I knew she was going through a divorce though, and that she had a kid......I hadn't noticed what a beautiful and attractive woman she was until that moment when she first treated my burnt hand......this woman was a real "farm girl" a natural beauty, with a real warm prescense and just so relaxed........

Johnathan Richman, her EX ,wrote a song about Gail......he just called it "Jeans and a Shirt"..........and I know fully well what he meant when he said..."he always liked her best, just in her jeans and a shirt" .......
Gail was the sexiest women I had ever met.....again 5 or 6 years older..........and we just jelled, I mean we did the "Love Thing" that Summer.......Good Loving .....All the time, Everywhere, In the Shower, In the Infirmary with the Sick Kids, In my Tent, In the Woods,  In the Water.........When ever and Where ever we could, we were always fooling around....It was my Summer of "69"....

It took a full month for that burn to heal, and Gail took special care to change the dressing every day....she did such a GREAT JOB that today I can't even hardly see the scar.......

Like all good things....Camp ended soon enough......and as it was still my intention to go to the University of Massachusettes @ Amherst  I moved to Sunderland MA......Gail went off to Boston with her son to try and reconnect with her husband Johnathan.....and once again I would go and meet a lover in the city.....and once again it would never be the same ......and we were never able to connect in the way that we had........our window of opportunity was up.......I don't know why we didn't stay together...... we were so happy  ......... so attracted to each another....so much in love.......and ............we really liked each other!