Hard Candy

He taught ski nautique at Ecole Champlain, a french speaking girls' summer camp in Ferrisburg, Vermont. His name was Jean-Claude. I was 12.

I was shipped off to Ecole Champlain for the summer of 1965 with a trunk full of azure blue short shorts and sleeveless, azure blue, v-necked canvas tee shirts (white for Sundays). I was consigned to Chalet X, (pronounced eeks,) at the end of a forest path that wound along the shore of Lake Champlain. There were six or eight girls per cabin. Our counselor was Katie. I learned to sweep the floor, make up my bunk bed, and pee behind the cabin at night so as to avoid the moth infested salle de bains. I also discovered that the little circular plastic disc Katie kept on the shelf above her bunk contained birth control pills. Which had to do with something murky, yet vaguely titillating called sex. Whatever that was, she did it with Jacques when she snuck out at night after taps.

 Jacques, the camp director, had a beautiful wife, a blonde, long-legged Joni Mitchell clone called Babe. He roamed abroad with a brace of black leopards on leashes. Apparently, some sort of unspoken droit de seigneur existed. Periodically, one of the lissome female counselors disappeared into Jacques' private office.

We girls in azure blue short shorts cavorted about learning equitation, natation, and sauver la vie all en francais. We joued au tennis, ate gouter (stacks of white bread with vats of peanut butter and raspberry jam), guzzled plastic pitchers of bug juice (pink lemonade with tiny mosquito carcasses floating on top) and speculated endlessly about the sexual lives of the counselors.

The dark-haired Jean-Claude roared into my summer riding a mono-ski behind an outboard motor boat. He carved a dramatic arc of water, threw up his arms to relinquish the tow rope and glided to the dock like the son of Poseidon. He wore red trunks.

I made it my business to stalk the waterfront. I ogled him as he swiped the outboard's engine with a dirty rag. I admired the way those snug red trunks clung to his derriere when he bent over to stack life vests, how the muscles in his biceps flexed as he coiled tow rope. I obsessed over the tiny translucent pearls of sweat on his bronzed back. I watched slack-jawed during French conversation class as he hosed off the boat deck. The gleam from a single Jean-Claude smile as I surfed the wake produced paroxysms of something I couldn't name. Something delicieux.

I inhabited an 8-week delirium that included swiping birth control pills from Katie's circular plastic disc. After spraining my pinky toe attempting a dock start, I rode in the boat blowing kisses as Jean-Claude sprayed spume. I learned to barefoot ski. I repeated je t'aime, je t'aime, Jean- Claude while my cabin mates slept. I French-kissed my pillow.

On the last day of camp, Jean Claude flashed me his dernier Jean-Claude smile, gave me his address, and said he would love to hear from me after I returned home. "Mais oui, ma jeunne fille!" He kissed my cheek. He offered me un bonbon from a tin. He enjoined me to keep the tin. Au revoir!

Once reluctantly en famille, I badgered my mother until she took me to town where I bought a duplicate tin of hard candies. I wrote Jean-Claude a long, amorous letter en francais and after smearing my lips with my mother's Estee Lauder lipstick, I peppered the letter with scarlet kisses and sent it off with les bonbons in an envelope that reeked of Chanel.

Then I waited.

"Are you sure there's nothing for me?" I demanded daily.

"Not a thing. What is it you're looking for exactly?" my mother asked. "Did you order something from the back of one of those comic books again? Seed packets to sell or baseball cards or something?"

"NO!"

One day, I rifled through a tower of mail on her desk and discovered it. Un lettre from Jean-Claude!

"Mom!" I howled. "When did this come?"

"Oh, I don't know," she said carelessly. "Last week? I'm sorry, I guess I forgot to tell you. Is it something important?"

"Merde! I can't believe you!" I shouted.

"You've become extremely rude lately, and I don't like it!" she shouted after me as I raced upstairs to my room. "Ever since you came home from that camp!"

Amie, Ma Cherie,
Merci boucoup pour les bonbons! I hope you enjoy un happy year
in your ecole. I will remember very much the summer camp and you.
I enjoy very much being your instructor of ski nautique.
-Jean-Claude

My lust for Jean-Claude ebbed like a sudden Tsunami on the shores of Lake Champlain. School had begun and things plus essentiels, like which boy's hockey gloves would I be wearing, or whose silver ID bracelet would be dangling from my wrist took precedence over my unrequited summer fantasies. Besides, spin-the-bottle required dexterity and intense concentration. French-kissing with braces was tricky.