One of my favorite songs is Neil Young's "Helpless". Here are the opening lyrics, as best I can make them out:

"There is a town in north Ontario
With dream comfort, memory to spare
And in my mind I still need a place to go
All my changes were there
Blue, blue windows behind the stars
Yellow moon on the rise
Day birds flying across the sky
Throwing shadows on our eyes "

In my mind's eye, there's a place where the green pines meet the blue lake where the moon rises over the water, and illuminates the dark-stained wood and the screen windows where, in the quiet, boys are sleeping, and dreaming... and changing. Not all my changes were in Cabin W_____, to be sure. And yet, every morning at Y-camp, I woke up; and I woke up a little more, every morning, every day. My changes were not the only changes during those two weeks, either. There were 10 of us boys, and I don't think any one of us left Y-camp the same as when we arrived. Some of us changed together. I will remember forever my 10 friends, and some of them are very special friends even now, though we haven't spoken for over 25 years.

On Opening Day, all that still lay ahead of us. We headed down that dusty trail to find our cabin. It seemed like a long walk; but then, every step that day revealed something new.

Cabin W_____ was the next-to-last from the end of the row. Apparently a couple of kids saw the sign over the door before we reached it, because they broke away and were in the midst of a mad dash to the steps, when Hal stopped them: "Wait, y'all - I need to go in and check for snakes." Snakes? We looked at each other. Snakes had, predictably, been the subject of lurid speculation on the bus trip, along with bears, wolves, ghosts, and space aliens, among other malign forces that could get boys who found themselves alone out in the woods. It was all brave talk on the bus - the snakes and company were abstract concepts. Besides, there were adults at camp, right? But Hal's snake-comment brought us up short. We were looking at an actual building that might contain an actual snake or three. No one tried to follow when Hal and our other counselor walked up the steps, pushed open the door, and went inside.

Obviously there were no snakes. Before we even had time to start speculating, Hal reappeared: "Okay, y'all can come inside now." And shortly, we were inside our new home for the next 14 days.

It was pretty much like I'd pictured it - stained-wood floors and walls, exposed beams overhead, metal bunk beds with thin mattresses against the walls. Hal and our other counselor had already put their stuff on the bottom bunks across from the door. There was an immediate scramble to claim the remaining beds. Hal and the other guy stood back and let us sort it out. (This was in contrast to my experience two years later, when we had pre-assigned beds. I don't know if camp policy changed or we just had a counselor with a passion for order.)

The bunks were arranged along the outer walls, with two against the front wall (with the door in between) two against the rear wall, and one set each at either end, perpendicular to all the others. Phil and I already had planned to be in the same set of bunk beds. Phil slept in a regular single bed at home, so the novelty of top bunk appealed to him; I had bunk beds, and knew I liked the bottom better. We ended up with the set immediately to the right of the door as you entered.

Other kids were claiming theirs, all in a rush. I won't list who was where. As I said, there's such a thing as too much trivia.

We had a good group of kids in our cabin. I only knew three of the 10 boys in our cabin on arrival at camp - Phil, a kid named Frank I'd met playing cards, and a kid I'd talked to on the bus, named Richie. But by the time the two weeks was up, we'd all bonded in various ways. (All, that is, except poor Richie, who got really homesick and cried a lot, and ended up leaving that first rainy weekend.) We ranged in age from 9 to 12 (the 8 y/o's were all in cabins down near the central area.) As I recall we had a lot in common overall - we were all from my city or its suburbs, all lower-middle-class to middle- class, all white, mostly Baptists or Methodists.

There were two boys in our cabin, aside from Phil, that I got to be especially good friends with. They were different kids, and I had different things in common with them.

One friend was the first Catholic boy I ever got to know well, or at least the first boy I remember whose Catholic identity was distinctive. His name was Tony St. _______. In the South, Saint-something names were decidedly uncommon. Tony had the perpendicular bottom bunk closest to mine, so we got maximum face-time. He went to parochial school, run by nuns, which struck me as exotic. This was back when many Catholics still didn't eat meat on Fridays, and Tony turned down the meat both Fridays we were there. I asked him about that, and he tried to explain about Catholics and fish on Fridays, but I never got a good grasp on the concept then.

I hadn't talked to Tony before we got inside that first day, but I liked him immediately. The first thing he did after plopping his stuff on his bottom bunk, was to open his backpack and pull out a soccer ball. My kind of kid! We both liked to talk, and that bonded us, too. Just picture two boys, constantly kicking a soccer ball around and constantly talking, often simultaneously, and you've got Tony and Danny.

Our friendship included another common interest: Sex. Tony was interested in sex; not as much as me, but to a greater degree than most boys I knew at camp. He liked to talk about sex. He didn't start out skinny-dipping in the lake, as I did, but after a few days he started stripping. He got erections and didn't hide them, and I caught him looking at my weenie more than once. We played that very sexual variety of water-tag with each other, enthusiastically. But in general, all that was secondary to a just-plain-good friendship. The time we spent on sexual matters was dwarfed by the time we spent on things like soccer. Tony and I liked each other a lot.

I'm sorry to say I never had any contact with Tony again, after the two weeks was up and we were back in town. I guess that's the downside to the way kids make friends so easily, without thinking - you lose touch so easily, without thinking. Life is a funhouse when you're a kid. Turn a corner, the scenery changes; and you keep going, facing forward, loving the journey, not looking back.

The other good friend I made was Joe. He had the bunk above Tony's, next to Phil. Joe was a different kind of friend for me than Tony, or Phil, or any other kids at Y-camp. He was either 11 or 12 y/o - I think he was 12, but I'm not sure. He wasn't especially interested in sports, although he was reasonably okay at those he went out for - softball was his preference (and baseball, back home.) He was, however, a CSAK (Certified Smart-Ass Kid), just like me. We both quickly developed reputations.

Joe was an old-timer at Y-camp. A few others in our cabin had been there before (Tony was a second-year kid, for example), but Joe had the most experience, and he stood out as a sort of authority-figure right away to everybody. This was his 3rd or maybe 4th summer, so he knew a lot of legends and inside stuff (example: "don't ever eat the mess-hall Vienna sausages"). And Joe had the best repertoire of dirty jokes, songs, and limericks of any kid in our cabin. We all learned a lot from Joe that summer. Here's one joke I remember:

"An astronaut lands on the moon and goes for a moonwalk. He finds this beautiful moon-girl, and she's stirring something in a giant iron pot. He asks, 'What are you doing?' and she says, 'Making babies.' He says, 'Can I show you how we make babies on earth?' and she says, 'Sure!' So he screws her. When they're done, she says, 'Well, where are the babies?' He says, 'Oh, that takes nine months.' And she says, 'Then why did you stop stirring?'"

Sex was a major, overt component of my friendship with Joe, and that aspect grew more pronounced toward the end of camp. Joe was the boy I came close to having sex with, that one night at the end. He was one of two boys in our cabin who had entered puberty, and I was fascinated by that, and by his open interest in sex. He liked sexual stuff, and he knew he liked it - just as I did. (Tony's interest, by contrast, was mostly latent or unconscious. Most boys I got to know at camp were uninterested, or had at most a latent interest.) Joe attracted me. Nothing romantic; just lust. I wanted to fool around with him. He knew that I wanted to fool around with him. And it was mutual, though I don't know if his desire was as strong as mine. I'll discuss all that later.

Those three - Phil, Tony, and Joe - were my special friends, but there were other interesting kids, too. Another boy, Bill, was quiet and I didn't get to know him super-well. But Bill was cool - he was a novelty to me and others, because he could identify by sight every type of tree and tree-leaf he saw. We used to test him by gathering up random assortments of leaves and tearing them into pieces (to disguise the shapes), and showing them to Bill. As I recall, he ID'd them correctly every time. That amazed me. I think I knew two types of trees at that age: "Pine", and "Other".

There are stories about all nine boys, but I'll come to them in turn. I'll just list each boy and something about him here - a cast of characters, like a stage play:

1. Phil - 10 y/o, the kid from my school
2. Tony - 9 y/o, the Catholic, soccer-playing kid
3. Joe - 12 y/o, the experienced kid
4. Bill - 11 y/o, the nature-expert kid
5. Frank - 9 y/o, the nice kid, afraid of water
6. Richie - 9 y/o, the youngest kid (I think), homesick, left early
7. J.J. - 12 y/o, the oldest kid, kinda quiet
8. Rob - 10 y/o the annoying kid (you'll see...)
9. Brian - 12 y/o, the hardshell Baptist kid
10. Danny - 9 y/o, the kid who... umm... no intro needed :)

Back to Opening Day: After we'd claimed our bunks, Hal told us to make up our beds with the sheets and stuff before we did anything else, because if we waited until night it would be too dark to do it. It hadn't occurred to me till he said it, and a look at the ceiling confirmed: No electric lights. In fact, no electricity. I now know that's routine for summer camp, but at the time it was yet another novelty. Immediately I said to Phil and a couple of other kids, pointing: "Hey, look, y'all! There ain't no lights!!" They were all as surprised as I was. Hal laughed and said, "Well, think about it. We have big screens and no glass windows. If we had lights and sockets in here, and a big ol' storm came up with rain blowing in, we'd all get zapped." Made sense.

Anyway, we got busy with making our beds. I was one of the first kids finished - one of my chores for years had been making my bed, and I was one of those rare boys who actually kind of liked doing it. (I still do, to this day.) So after finishing my own, I helped Phil, then went over and helped Frank, who was having trouble. It turned out that Frank (or actually his mom) had accidentally packed a bunch of fitted bottom sheets and only one flat top sheet. It was okay - like most of us, he kept the same two sheets on his bed the whole time. (I can now think of good reasons why the camp specified that you bring so many sheets: those big ol' storms, for one thing. And some kids probably had nighttime bladder control problems. I had one accident myself that summer, in fact, but fortunately none of my pee got on the sheets. Maybe some kids had to change the sheets after wet dreams, too. I didn't have that problem.)

After the beds were satisfactorily made, Hal told us we could go check things out, explore, or whatever - as long as we stayed out of the woods and away from the water. I immediately recruited Phil and Tony and J.J. for some kick- soccer. ("Kick-soccer", or playground or backyard soccer, wasn't much like the organized sport of soccer - basically, it was two groups of kids facing each other, trying to score by kicking the ball past an imaginary line. No passing, no dribbling, no place-kicks, no out-of-bounds, no finesse... just raw shooting and blocking. Similar concept to a shootout in basketball.)

We got Tony's ball and headed up the path. Other kids were spilling out of cabins, running back and forth, and generally creating boy-chaos. On the way up the path, J.J. ran into a couple of other kids he knew, and decided he was going to do whatever they had planned instead; so we were down to three. When we got up to the soccer fields, some older kids had already taken one field, so we claimed the other. Three-man kick-soccer is really just a free-for all; no point in even pretending you've got teams with that number. So our fun consisted of each of us making random, scrimmage-type attempts to shoot past the other two. Eventually, and predictably, this degenerated to tackle-soccer. (It's probably good that J.J. wasn't with us for this part; he was a big kid.)

After a little while, I suggested we practice "real" goal shots. I was the smallest kid of the three of us, and tackle-soccer (or tackle-anything) was not my strong suit. So we lined up on goal. It was immediately obvious to me that Tony was serious about his soccer, and good at it - his goal shooting was impressive. I was (ahem) his equal. Phil was rougher, but for an inexperienced kid he looked pretty good. Tony and I were working with him on technique, when we heard the bell ringing. Time for orientation! Tony grabbed his ball and we went over to the quad.

I've already taken you on the tour, so you know what we saw. In addition to the layout, we learned some rules and customs and stuff. This was when it was finally explained to us about bathing with Ivory soap in the lake. They told us daily baths were mandatory (except Opening Day and the last day, Family Day), unless it was lightning and thundering. I remember giggling over that with some kids: "What if lightning hit the lake, and we all got electrified, and we shot straight up in the air, and you could see our skeletons, like on 'Bugs Bunny'..."

A few words about lake-baths: Bathing took place in the shallows in front of each cabin, always right at dusk. The evening routine didn't vary much - typically, we all quickly stripped to our underwear in the cabin, got our towels and soap, hurried down to the lake in our underwear and flip-flop sandals, stripped naked fast, jumped in and bathed fast, got out and dried off fast, put on our clean underwear (and same old flip-flops), and hurried back. Unlike skinny-dipping and other Y-camp nudity, bath-time wasn't really "exposing". The only times anyone could see you naked were the brief moments before you entered and after left the water. I imagine they scheduled it at dusk so the shy or modest kids could feel like they weren't on display. And possibly so all the soap-scum could disappear overnight, and we'd have a nice clean-looking lake for the next day's water-activities.

Bathing time wasn't erotic to me. I was curious, but skinny-dipping in the sunshine was much easier way to satisfy that. And anyway - it was a damn bath, after all.

Another custom was explained at this time, too - a custom central to the Y- camp experience, for me anyway: skinny-dipping. The camp director gave us some rules about skinny-dipping. It was allowed during rec swim, but it was optional, and we were not to give any kids a hard time who chose to wear swimsuits. (Some kids teased anyway - I didn't.) Skinny-dipping was only for rec swim - suits required during instructional swim. (Looking back, I assume that rule was connected to the fact that the instructor sometimes has to hold the swimmer around his waist.) We couldn't skinny-dip on Family Day. We couldn't skinny-dip after dark (or even swim after dark, for that matter). We couldn't do it away from the camp waterfront, except on the final two-day wilderness canoe trip. And we were told not to laugh or make a big deal if we saw another boy "get embarrassed". At the time, I took that at face value, but in retrospect I think our director was using "get embarrassed" as a euphemism for "get an erection". With a few exceptions, I don't remember anyone laughing at another boy with an erection. (It wouldn't have occurred to me to laugh.) And there were lots of boys with erections, or at least it seemed like it at the time.

Orientation was over; now it was dinnertime. We went inside, found our tables (set up cabin-by-cabin), and then we listened while the dinner rules were explained - things like taking your plates and stuff to the kitchen window, and of course, "no food fights". Then we sat, and there was a communal prayer of blessing. Then - finally - we got to eat. I hadn't realized how hungry I was until the food showed up. The main dish was fried chicken (we had alot of fried chicken at camp). I have never liked fried chicken much, but I inhaled it that evening. It had been a calorie-demanding day.

During dinner I sat next to J.J. on one side and Bill on the other. Both of these guys were on the quiet side. I got several conversations going with one or the other, but they seemed to peter out after a few exchanges. I ended up talking to the two kids across from me, Tony and Joe. This was when we found out about Joe's apparent wealth of camp knowledge. When the bowl of green beans came around, he warned us, "Check for stuff in your beans - some kids found a big staple in the bowl a few years ago." I have no idea if that incident was true or apocryphal; but we all checked.

After dinner was evening cabin-activity time, the evening assembly after that. Bath time was usually scheduled after evening assembly; but that first day they let us off the hook on baths. Evening assembly was pushed later, accordingly, and we had a nice long stretch during which to have fun and get acquainted with our cabin-mates. Our counselors got to choose cabin activities for us that evening. Hal asked us which of three things we'd rather do: Play volleyball; play another cabin in softball; or watch old silent movies in the mess-hall. It was a pretty even three-way split, as I recall. Phil and I and one other kid (I forget who) wanted to play volleyball. But there was a slim plurality for softball, so Hal and our other counselor went to find an opposing team while we yakked. They came back after a little while with long faces and reported that we were too late - both softball diamonds were in use, and so were the five volleyball nets.

That left the movies. A couple of kids asked if they could go shoot baskets in the gym instead. Hal sort of hemmed and hawed, then had a conversation with our other counselor about whether our cabin had to stay together. While they were talking, I asked Phil what he would rather do, and he surprised me by saying, "the movies, I guess." Phil was a basketball fanatic, so I was expecting him to pick the gym. I wasn't overly fond of basketball, but silent movies sounded boring. I figured I'd go with his choice. Hal eventually said shooting baskets was okay, so 3-4 kids went down to the gym and the rest of us went to the movies. The movies, all comedies, turned out to be pretty good after all. That's always happened to me, all my life - I get the idea that something doesn't sound too interesting, and when I do it anyway, it turns out to be fun. I'm not sure why that happens, but it's a lot better than the opposite.

After the movies, we had evening assembly, also known as vespers, which always had a religious theme (this was the YMCA, after all...) I don't remember what the assembly was about specifically - the religious parts of camp all tended to blur together for me. But I do remember who I was sitting with: Tony and Phil, and another kid from our cabin, Rob, who I hadn't talked to before.

Rob was, I quickly realized, a kid I was going to have to work hard to like. He was 10 years old and made it clear he thought he was smarter, stronger, and generally superior to us 9 year-olds. (That's even more ludicrous than it sounds, when you consider that I was less than a month from my 10th birthday.) It wasn't just an age thing - he also thought he was superior to the 11 and 12 y/o's. At several points when Phil and I were whispering during the assembly, he leaned over and told us, "Y'all aren't supposed to be talking." I got an attitude about Rob that evening and kept it throughout the two weeks. He didn't like me much either. Fortunately I didn't have to deal with him much - he didn't play soccer or do much swimming with us (he was a beginning swimmer), and his bunk was on the far end of the cabin. It's just as well. Rob and I nearly got into fights about half a dozen times. Hal was always vigilant about breaking it up.

When assembly was over, we had "quiet hour" in the cabin - the time for writing letters home and such, before we were supposed to be in bed with lights out. We could talk as long as we were quiet. I didn't think I needed to write a letter the first night, so I talked to a few others, mainly Tony - this was when I found out about his being Catholic, parochial school, and all that. About 10-15 minutes before lights-out, Hal told us to go brush our teeth and go to the bathroom, in pairs. Anytime you went somewhere in camp after dark, you were on the buddy system - nobody was allowed to go anywhere by himself. Tony and I were already buddies. So we grabbed our toothbrushes and paste and went down together, to brush our teeth and pee.

Teeth-brushing at camp was accomplished at a big outdoor trough in a wooden frame, with a faucet at one end and a drain at the other. The drain emptied into a big rubber hose, which dumped out foamy, toothpaste-filled water about six feet away from the trough - no EPA inspections, remember... There were four troughs for our end of camp, two near each latrine. Tony and I and several other kids from our cabin (not sure who - I was still learning names and faces then) joined the throng of boys at the trough. We noticed a bunch of the boys just left their toothpaste and toothbrushes in the upper end of the trough when they were done, so we did, too. That later proved to be a minor problem. It turned out that a whole lot of boys (including me) liked Crest toothpaste and red toothbrushes. Sort of like the sleeping-bag confusion.

After the teeth, Tony and I went down to the latrine to pee. I don't remember this as clearly as I do many of the preceding incidents. In fact, I remember a lot more vividly, and in greater detail, the teethbrushing that first evening. Standing right next to a boy I liked, holding our weenies and looking at each other while we talked, might sound like a sexually-memorable experience. It wasn't to me at that point, for two reasons: (a) I've never thought of urinating as particularly sexual; and (b) peeing with other boys was something very familiar to me, whereas all my vivid opening-day memories are of new and different phenomena. If you've been involved in amateur sports, or anything else in which groups of boys take bathroom breaks as a group, you know the drill - everybody rushes in, pisses in the nearest available urinal or toilet (sometimes you share, if there aren't enough bowls to go around), then rush out. It was familiar, and no more sexual to me than washing my hands - up to that point.

That foregoing paragraph may seem odd, given my boyhood sexuality, but it's not. The key words are "up to that point." Y-camp, and seeing boys in their underwear and naked and with erections, and playing grab-the-weenie, and what Joe and I experienced - all that changed me, or more properly, accelerated a change I'd already begun. I call that "waking up", sexually. I was still mostly "asleep" that first evening, and so Tony's weenie was only another part of him, albeit a part I was curious about. Less than two weeks later, Tony's weenie had a different meaning to me.

Anyway, Tony and I went down to the latrine. It was over-full of other boys doing the same thing, so we waited. I think we were talking soccer at this point. Eventually, we got inside and peed, standing next to each other. The main thing I remember is telling him "don't fall in" as we stood there. (For those who don't know, latrines are basically big pits in the ground with toilet seats.) Saying "don't fall in" must be one of the world's oldest jokes - my guess is that it was invented no later than five minutes after the first latrine in history was dug. Then we went back up the hill, still yakking away.

As soon as Tony and I got back to the cabin, Counselor Hal told us, grinning, "Man, I could hear y'all coming half a mile away!" I was accustomed to comments like that. I picked up my pillow, feinting at Hal like I was going to whomp him. I usually didn't take that step with a guy much older than me, but Hal seemed like a good guy. He mock-scowled at me, and said, "You hit me with that pillow, Danny, and you're a dead man." Usually I'd retort in that situation - something like "Yah, but if I go, you're goin' with me!" But I wasn't quite ready to challenge his authority to that degree, even as a joke. So I laughed and dropped the pillow. (The next day, I was talking to Richie, and he said, "I can't believe you were gonna hit Hal with a pillow!" I laughed and told him I was pretending. Richie actually seemed a little relieved - he was on the timid side, and I guess he was worried it might turn into a real fight, or something.)

After all the kids got back from the latrine, we got undressed, and those who wore PJs put them on. (All but three of us slept in pajamas - it was just underwear for Counselor Hal, Joe, and me.) Hal led us in a short group prayer (we did that some nights, but not all - I don't know if that was by design, or if Hal just forgot some of the time.) Then, we got under the sheets, and Hal got the flashlights turned off. I was good (for once) and didn't try to carry on a whispered conversation with my neighbors; but some other kids did, and after a few minutes Hal said, ominously, "Am I gonna have to separate y'all??" That got things quiet.

I usually had (and still have) no trouble falling asleep, especially after a busy day. But I was still keyed-up; and the cabin was different than being at home. I lay there for a while on my back, looking up at the sagging outline that Phil's body made in the upper-bunk mattress. There was a dusk-to- dawn mercury-vapor light off past the last cabin, and another one down by the latrine, and those cast a faint light inside the cabin. Where I lay, I could look out the big screened window up to the treetops, and a patch of clear sky over the path. I could see the lake if I turned my head. Whenever I turned my head, the lake was always there, always flat, calm, just the lightest of ripples to disturb the glass surface, dark and deep, reflecting only the remote stars scattered across the water and a distant dusk-to-dawn light on the farther shore.

I lay there, letting sleep steal up on me, listening to night noises, familiar and strange. The soft sound of boys breathing, an occasional creak or rustle as someone shifted in his sleep (or maybe wakefulness, like me). Outside, crickets. (Crickets are eternal in the South, forever and ever, world without end, amen.) Other night bugs I didn't recognize. The intermittent breeze through the trees. And - a sound so exotic to me, and yet so primally magnetic - the voice of the lake, a voice impossible to describe. It was so deeply filling, so very deeply satisfying - like a long cool drink of water after a journey under the desert sun, or the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. I have no trouble believing that humankind evolved from primordial life in the sea. It calls us home, timelessly.

At some point, I slipped into sleep, seamlessly. And so ended Opening Day.