The True Story of Why I Matter-of-Factly Hate Camping

Wednesday is about books, or reading — or sometimes writing. Here’s a new short story, or true short story. Or both…

For Christmas one year I got a two-person pup-tent. And I was so stoked. We put it up right away, out in the backyard. Which, of course, was a stone’s throw from the house. We had a wee pool and a spa, and it was the 1980s so there was a Ponga fence, and my dad had a black belt in Macramé — so by the pool there was this big long dangling rope tree-thing, with a glass table-top hanging inside it for drinks and things.

When I hear George Benson’s Give Me The Night now I think of all the Miami Winecooler that was chaffed down out the back of my folks’ place. It’s a wonder there wasn’t cocaine galore and key-parties. But my mum and dad cleaned cars in their spare-time as a side-hustle to earn extra money to get ahead. All night, and most weekends. So, though there were extra keys in the bowl, they tended to stay there for a bit. And the only lines of icing sugar at our place were actual lines of proper icing sugar, possibly as a backup for the pav. Or whatever else was being made for the pool-party.

The pool parties were funny, and so often impromptu. Mum and dad would take the ‘team’ from work out for a staff ‘do’. And they’d all end up back at ours, and it was such a treat, cos we we’d be allowed to get up and hang out with the boozed-up adults. Our great grandmother would have already taken her teeth out, so she’d be in the spare room and snoring until 7am regardless of noise. But as soon as we heard the first splashes, me and my bro were up. We’d be allowed in the pool too, at 11pm or even 2am. Whenever it was. It was loose too. Men picking up women and tossing them in the pool. Men shoving each other in the pool. It was always the funniest thing.

There were no phones in pockets then, so whole lives and systems of organisation couldn’t crumble. Just a few dress shirts that would go on very quickly to be used as spare rags. It was always classic! It was somehow the funniest thing you could do: Push someone in the goddamned swimming pool. Ruin their hair. But also make their day. And make everyone’s night!

Every now and then, a guy might complain about his shoes, and ask for time to take them off, and quick-smart he’d be shuffling his feet out so he could save them from the drink.

The stereo was turned all the way up, and the neighbours would wake up, grab a bottle from the pantry and head over to join in. It’d be Icehouse’s Man of Colours, or Hall & Oates’ H20. It’d be the aforementioned George Benson, or more often his Weekend in L.A. album, because the title track — and the version of On Broadway were half a side long. Each!

There’d be food galore, all the ladies in the kitchen, whipping up whatever they could for a midnight snack, and then about a dozen people would cram into the spa pool and god knows what was happening in that particular Petri dish. But shit it felt like fun back then. Um, well I shouldn’t say ‘felt’ I guess…

But one time, when everyone left, finally, about 3am or something, my dad agreed to sleep in the pup-tent with me. It had been up for a couple of days, and I’d used it as a sunshade during daylight hours. Me in there with my pick-a-path books. Just choosing my OWN adventure…My little Sanyo tapedeck on batteries, and my dubbed tapes of Bananarama and Cyndi Lauper. My Masters of The Universe action figures all lined up around the edges of the tent.

But this was going to be the first night I slept in the tent. I was excited. But nervous too. And I asked my dad if we’d be safe. I was about 8 years old. And I remember — vividly — asking with an irrational fear what we’d do if anyone came around the back of our house and reached us in the tent. They could club us to our deaths and mum and my brother wouldn’t know until the morning, I do remember saying.

“We’ll be fine”, dad reassured me. And I curled up in my sleeping bag — and though I remember being so nervous and so excited all at once, it was also so ridiculously late that I fell asleep before my head hit any makeshift pillow. I’d rolled up my “Mork” jacket — homemade by my mum — but it squelched and shifted shape, never stayed in the right configuration. So I had my “ugly” rugby jersey, a mismatch of various colours, as my pillow instead.

A few seconds later — after several hours of actual sleep — it was 7am and I woke up alone in the tent. They’d taken my dad. They had taken my dad. They had snuck around the back and they had grabbed him, and taken him, and he was gone now and my arms were hot and loose and my skin felt strange and I tasted ‘sick’ in my mouth. So I ran to the back door of the house and it was wide open — and I worried! I really, really worried. But I crept inside, to try to find my mum, to break it to her that someone had taken my dad…

The snoring was louder than it had ever been as I walked down the hall. Great granny was giving it the full lawnmower, and a chainsaw as well. But hang on, that wasn’t just her.

I pushed into my mum and dad’s room and there’s the old boy just out on his back. Mum told me he’d snuck in the house straight after I’d gone to sleep. And I felt this weird, ugly betrayal. I didn’t have the words for it, but I was wild and confused and so close to tears that I could feel my eyes getting sticky as they blinked.

“Dad”! I yelled. “Why did you leave me out there alone in the backyard, in the tent, for the baddies to find me, and kill me”.

He hacked out a cough and with his eyes still closed said, “You don’t sound very dead mate”.

I asked again why he’d left me there. And he matter-of-factly told me that it was bloody uncomfortable in the tent, on the ground, with no bedding, just a sleeping bag, and it was stupid to him to be out there when he had his own bed inside.

And that was that. We never talked about it ever again. And though the tent went up for days on end most summers for a while, it was just the place to shade the stereo and action figures. It was a good spot for reading, and sometimes for a post-swim nap after a cheeky bowl of Cheerios or too many chippies, but only ever during daylight hours.

And that is the true story of why I matter-of-factly hate camping. But still love George Benson.