Commit to the bit
Let it not be a bit. On vintage troll dolls, returning to summer camp, and the permission slip of writing.
I’m going back to summer camp in a few weeks.
A couple months ago, I wrote about being reminded on a hike in the hills near my house of the farm camp I went to when I was 9 years old. “Crickets always bring me back to sleep-away summer camp—not a distinct isolated memory but the collage of it,” I wrote. “The bodily feeling of being an adolescent in nature, surrounded by other girls, and without my parents.”
I wrote about milking goats, swimming in the river, and braiding garlic:
I often think about these camp memories as being from the “before times.” Before puberty and the further encroachment of a heteronormative girl-hating culture (that was also supposedly all about “girl power”). The before where my entire being seemed to thrum with creative possibility—big possibility. Big desire. Bigger than boys. Bigger than my parents. At-home-in-the-universe big.
It happens that my kid is also the same exact age I was during that “before times” summer, and I’ve been thinking about him as being on a certain kind of precipice too as I’ve ferried him to and from various camps.
Well, one thing led to another and over the last weeks I started working on a novel partially set at a fictionalized version of my old summer camp. It’s been real 90s nostalgia over here, writing in a turquoise notebook covered in orca whales using scented pens that remind me of the smell of Lip Smackers. I’ve been diving into research that has surfaced everything from those old school press-on geometric earrings to Herbal Essences commercials.12
This past weekend, I happened to go to the Alameda Antiques Fair and came across a big plastic tub full of vintage troll dolls. I found one with hot-pink hair, just like the one I had in grade school. The guy selling them gave it to me for free. I’ve been carrying it around the house with me as I write, from the kitchen table to the front yard, rubbing its little Buddha belly.
Maybe it was something about that troll doll that made me write to my old camp to ask if I could visit. I happen to have a trip planned to drive up north for a writing retreat with friends, and we’ll be about two-hours away from the camp. It’s not exactly a convenient drive, but it’s more convenient than driving straight from the Bay Area.
I emailed the camp to ask if I can visit. They said yes. They said yes!
I love the permission slip of writing, the way it justifies a little weirdness, whether it’s cotton-candy scented pens or vintage troll dolls. I love how it lets you ask for weird favors: Mind if I wander around your property with a notebook for a while?
This was part of what I loved so much about reporting, the way it not only gave me access to world-renowned experts on X, Y, or Z topic but also granted passage to any number of behind-the-scenes spaces, whether a sex doll factory or a porn set.
Perhaps a jarring segue but—speaking of the manufacture of fantasy—I’m reminded of how at 5-years-old at Disneyland I stood long enough by the door where all the characters entered the park that I glimpsed a wardrobe malfunction just as the door swung open. I realized that Minnie was just a person in a costume.
I love these animating forces of curiosity and obsession, and everything that they help to reveal about the world. I love committing to the bit, but letting it not be a bit, actually, at all.
I actually just had to buy those sticker earrings just now.
Please just take a moment to watch this compilation of Herbal Essences commercials that were just casually airing all the time in the 90s.
OMG those commercials. I vaguely remembered this campaign, but wow. So orgas…organic!
Dude. I only gave up using Herbal Essences THIS YEAR. I washed my hair with that, and made it part of my identity, for 31 YEARS. That's how strong the 90s was with me.