Part 22 of 29

Saturday, October 12, 2013
Well, actually I'm writing very early Sunday morning in the communal kitchen so I don't disturb any of my fellow campers. And why am I up early on a Sunday morning? Simple: My fellow campers may be beacons of femininity by day, but they snore like longshoreman during the night. Not that I've personally been able to listen to a longshoreman snore, mind you, but there must be some truth to the old saw or nobody would have started sawing with it.

A rough-cut saw, indeed!

We were up to all hours last night, gossiping, singing, telling stupid stories and all the things that you do on a campout. The weather was fine so we all sat around the campfire to enjoy the sort-of-wilderness. Yes, there were some bugs, but Mary Ann was right and the mosquitoes were gone.

Some of the stories were pretty good, some were pretty lame, and some just plain shocked Angel-trying-to-be-a-girl! I had no idea you could tell so many funny stories about having your period. Or some downright icky ones. Going to Bible Camp had simply not prepared me for an evening around the campfire with a bunch of college girls.

After one particularly funny (and gross!) one I gave Mary Ann a look of despair and she just stuck her tongue out at me. So I took advantage of it and gave her a kiss. I'm afraid that kiss cemented our reputation as lesbian lovers, since she took advantage of me. When the hooting began we just kept going to see how much we could stretch it out.

Too bad it was too dark for anyone to see a stopwatch, I'm curious how long it lasted in objective time. Subjective time was a couple of centuries.

If the kiss didn't tell everyone we were lovers, then bringing our own blow-up queen-size bed would have nailed it down. Neither one of us wanted to sleep on those bunk beds with the gravel-filled mattresses.

Of course, that assumes anyone could get any sleep in the Chamber of Snorrors. As long as I was up early, I supposed I should go and get a shower before all the hot water is gone. I'm glad there are individual shower stalls, otherwise I'd be in a whole lot of hurt!

Or so I thought. I was the first, but by the time I had finished and dressed in my cubicle I could hear several other woman moving around. Nothing else to do but come out, where I found myself among several woman in various states of undress. If I ever wanted to study the several species of brassiere in its native habitat, I had the opportunity this morning. I felt vaguely disappointed that none of them were wearing matching bra-and-panty sets, and my vestigial male libido cried out in protest.

As I stood there in shock and awe, little Lula, wearing not a stitch of clothing, smiled at me and claimed my shower stall with a cheery 'good morning!' Moments later a tall girl with a truly impressive pair of breasts picked up her bra and casually reached behind herself to snap the hooks, then settled her breasts in place to her satisfaction. Then she casually stepped into her panties and covered the dark bush of pubic hair. Since the hair on her head was strawberry blonde, some corner of my overwhelmed mind realized she had to have dyed her hair.

I firmly told myself that this sort of thing is no different than what I had encountered in the boy's locker room at school, but logic can only take you so far in such a situation. I was just another girl among several other girls and I had darn well remember that.

I must have been mumbling to myself because when I started to brush my teeth I had to stop. I brushed my wig and made myself presentable for the day, longing for the time when my hair grew long enough to no longer need to wear a wig.

I also found out there are basically two types of women - those that use makeup even at a campout where there were no men to impress and those that don't. There's still enough of the male in me to be impressed by a really good makeup job, but that competes with a lifetime of my father's railing about modesty and vanity in a woman. I really think that most women look better without makeup.

Call it the natural look or whatever you want, but there's something I find more genuine about a girl who doesn't think she has to enhance her natural looks. Mary Ann tells me I'm lucky that I fall into that category, I wouldn't want to spend all the time needed to do makeup before and eight o'clock class and then spend all day worrying I had smeared something and looked like a clown.

Mary Ann and Eve have shown me a few things when we had gone out somewhere special, and under those circumstances being made up was kind of fun, but I really like a genuine, unenhanced face most of the time.
 

Back at the cabin I was drafted to help with breakfast and was once again glad I had been getting cooking lessons. While some of my fellow campers were into healthy breakfasts like yogurt and granola, most of them were perfectly fine with bacon and eggs. I got to make several batches of buttermilk biscuits using Bisquick, which is something I had never heard of. My mother and Eve are both into making things from scratch, so I didn't know much about convenience foods. Even a novice like me can't go wrong adding water to a package of mix and dropping the result on a cookie sheet. Delicious!

The group seems to have adopted Grandpa's 'the cook doesn't do dishes' ethic so I was very happy to be a cook.
 

I have to hand it to Diana, the lady who organized this weekend. Everything seemed to be running smoothly. Christina had organized the kitchen and had a rota of who was helping with which meal. Of course, there were some who loved to cook and helped because they loved it, and there was me who helped because I wanted to learn.

By 10 AM everything was cleaned up and we went on a hike to a waterfall about a mile or so down a wooded trail. Knowing the hike was on tap for the day, I had reluctantly put on a pair of slacks and a tunic-type top. Not quite a dress, but even I wasn't silly enough to go on a hike through the woods in a skirt

Mary Ann and I took a little kidding about holding hands as we hiked on the wider parts of the trail, but it was all good natured. The woods were alive with color and the falls was a sight to behold with the water rushing over a stretch of rapids after flying over a cliff face.

To my surprise, I was actually enjoying the weekend. I guess my memories of Church Camp had soured me on such things. With people who actually wanted to be there and weren't trying to indoctrinate me, camping turned out to be fun. I was getting to know some of the people Mary Ann had met and I was happy to meet them.
 

I was drawn to the kitchen once again to help prepare dinner. I seem to have a real need to become a better cook, and the women in the group who are organizing the kitchen are happy to help me learn. Mary Ann and Lula helped me chop veggies, but Lula had to use an improvised booster seat to reach the counter. She just brushed it off, but I was embarrassed that she had to be treated like a child.

She noticed my discomfort and just told me that there are far worse afflictions in this world than being short. She has learned to live with her body and knows what she needs to accomplish her goals, so there is no embarrassment in a booster seat.

Should I be embarrassed that I don't have natural breasts, that I need help to make my body look like what I want it to? I think Lula may have been teaching me more than cooking.
 

One more thing needs to be said. When it came time for bed, I suddenly found myself surrounded by naked women. Why not? I was one of those women as far as anyone there knew. I have to say that the female breast comes in the most wondrous variety of shapes and colors. Sure I appreciated them from my partially male prospective, but they also inspired a longing to have breasts of my own. I wonder how flexible Audrey could be about such things, but I wasn't going to ask too soon. I didn't want to come off as a little kid whining 'are we there yet?'

I simply turned away from the crowd and shucked my tunic, unsnapped my bra and slid into my opaque nightgown. When I removed my slacks I was just one more girl in the crowd. No one noticed, no one cared one way or the other.

Sleeping wearing a gaff and a wig is a pain, though.
 

Sunday, October 13
Was it a worship service? No mention of Jesus, a few references to a higher power, a lot of singing and several people simply saying how renewed they felt by this weekend in the woods. The altar was a campfire, the host was more buttermilk biscuits and the wine was some unidentified juice as we sat around the campfire.

No leader that I could identify, just an expression of the joy of living. I felt the need to express my delight at being among such company, my thankfulness for having Mary Ann in my life. Like all the other statements of faith it was simple and direct.

Yes, it was a worship service, but not one my father would recognize or approve of. No commands to holiness, no threats of hell for disobedience, just rejoicing in the world we live in.

Enough said.
 

I could get to enjoy this communal meal-making. I asked Christina just how she knew how much to bring to feed us all and how she managed to keep it all straight. I found out her parents ran a restaurant and she had just kind of absorbed the knowledge through her pores as she grew up. If I was really interested there were courses available in culinary disciplines, but I don't think I would want to make a living feeding masses of people.

Since this was an official school activity, the people in the cafeteria had helped her figure out what was needed and ordered it through their supply sources, thus saving quite a bit of money. While most of the weekend was paid for out of student activity funds, no one wanted to waste any money.

She said Thanksgiving was coming up, so if we had a big family gathering then I should pick the brains of the women in my family as a starting point. This made me a little sad, knowing that I would never be able to share the kitchen duties with my mother like I could have if I were born her daughter. She noticed that I suddenly got quiet and asked why, and I told her I was estranged from my family but didn't offer any details.

Her answer was simple - since Mary Ann and I were engaged then she should have a family who could teach me. That let me tell her how her mother had already been doing that and Eve and Grandpa were helping me learn to cook. Concentrate on the good things and life is much better. Little did she know she was repeating the advice Audrey had given me so many times.

So we chopped onions, peppers and garlic for goulash, wearing a pair of thin gloves so my nicely polished nails didn't smell like vampire repellent. We fried up a mound of hamburger, then added big cans of diced tomatoes, huge pots of elbow macaroni and heaps of paprika, then left it to simmer and let the flavors blend.

While that was simmering we chopped more garlic and simmered it in butter for garlic bread while our other helpers were chopping lots of crisp veggies for salad. This was all done with lively conversation about a vast array of topics; school, boys, clothes, families, politics, dirty old men, cute young men, cute young women - with a leer at Mary Ann and me - puppies, the list was endless.

Nothing like this ever happened to me when I was trying to be the man my father thought I should be. I found myself wishing he could have such a rich life to live, but maybe he finds his joy in his version of god. Who am I to judge? I have found what works for me; he has found what works for him. I do not want to make the mistake of imposing my solution on others.