Letter from Camp

PUBLISHED IN NEST MAGAZINE, WINTER 2003–2004

Hey Stephen,
I took the train upstate this weekend to spend a few days at Camp. The city’s been hot and muggy lately, and many of my friends are out of town on summer excursions. So I figured the country would be good; it’s a break from the concrete and steel to greenery and a great big house to work on and relax in. It’s strange that I go out of the city in order to enjoy the indoors.

It’s true I started this thing as a way of getting out of New York City and away from school for awhile, but it’s beginning to get under my skin in ways I wasn’t expecting. Spending time upstate at the house has become more than some project I’m involved with now. I’m thriving in these lush, eccentric spaces I’m helping to decorate. It’s a hard thing to say. I think I’ve always liked decorating. I’ve always wanted to pick out curtains, rearrange the furniture, repaint the walls, and play house.

I’ve never told you about this, but Mark (you remember Mark, right?) and I used to walk over to the housing development out behind his house whenever I went over to play. Our greatest fun was to crawl through the window of the model home in the development and pretend like we were a couple who lived there.

Actually, now that I’m writing about it, I remember that when we first began to frequent the development, we just went in to explore the construction site. We were there on weekends when the contractors and workmen were not around, so it was as if we had this whole imaginary neighborhood to ourselves. We started playing realtor and would take turns as the discerning potential home buyer, parading through these skeletons of unfinished houses and narrating, “as you can see, the vestibule at the landing of the grand staircase affords a sweeping view of the, ahem, Audelia Lane Baptist Church playground.”

When we discovered the unlocked window in the model home which had carpets and light fixtures and furniture and art hanging on the walls, we reached a consensus that treating this one as a real estate wasn’t appropriate, and we should instead approach it like home. Playing roommates quickly turned into playing husband and wife, and this turned out to be the most enthralling activity Mark and I could imagine engaging in. Our make believe relationship in our deserted dream house lasted for months. We were a happy couple pleasantly making home almost every weekend between soccer practice and Boy Scout meetings until we attended different schools and began to grow apart.

I’m writing you about Mark to say that there’s this thing I loved to do when I was a kid that I’ve been suppressing, aside from being in relationships with other guys (whether a product of my imagination or otherwise). I really love homemaking, but up until now, that behavior hasn’t been condoned. That inclination was never acceptable. Decorating and maintaining interiors isn’t something one can really do in high school. But art is something I could study without hindrance or reproach, so I focused on that. It is as if I’ve been choosing the things I do because they seem acceptable rather than because I want to do them. This sounds to me like a juvenile epiphany, but I’ve come to it now at 21 years old nonetheless.

I like interiors. I’m a decorator inside, but interior decoration is so gay. That’s what I think I’ve been dealing with for the past few years. I’ve shied away from decoration in my studies for fear of being stigmatized. I imagine that the only thing less desirable for a young man than being an outsider is being a cliché outsider. “Decorative” is, in fact, a derogatory adjective in design school when talking about someone’s work, because decorative implies pretty yet powerless: a despicable combination. But being here at Camp makes me question that. It makes me think (or makes me remember) that I actually like decoration.

And there must have been some special circumstance that made me realize this. It was most likely a culmination of living in a house in the middle of nowhere with artistic strangers who didn’t know my family, my friends, and didn’t go to my college, and not being graded on my work. This is starting to sound suspiciously like the conditions under which I came out of the closet, so maybe I’m writing to come out as a decorator? Strange.

Joe told me about a cover story they did for Nest awhile ago about discovering “the decorator gene.” They took a kid that exhibited what they thought of as innate decorator traits. It was handled very satirically with somewhat absurd photographs and off-the-cuff editorial. However, I find myself seriously musing that I have decorating in my blood. That sounds ridiculous. But even Joe tells me at times after other campers have put a furniture configuration together haphazardly or botched a floral arrangement that I should intervene; that what the place really needs is a gay touch. My friends back in New York City who are familiar with Nest have scoffed jokingly when I told them I’m involved with an interior design magazine, letting me know instead that I’m involved with a gay magazine, as though I wasn’t in on the joke.

It’s shocking, and personally assaulting, but I’m realizing that when I’m at Camp, and increasingly when I’m at school, and in New York City, and back home with my family in Texas; I’m alright with identifying as a decorator. I’ll tell people openly what I think of their curtains, their wallpaper, the texture of their duvet, and their throw pillows. I’ll say without fear of incrimination that what the place really needs is a reduction in dependence on overhead lighting and some splashes of yellow here and there to make things more cheery.

As young boys, Mark and I reveled in the dormant furnished model home of the housing development across his ally. We would carry on for hours in the great empty structure, not knowing that everyone else would consider our play too gay, too sissy, too girly, and too strange. As a child I found happiness in those model rooms, and in coming up to Camp for weekends or weeks at a time to be among people who care about decoration far more deeply than a young man ought to, I’ve rediscovered the joy I felt as a decorator before I knew that decorating isn’t acceptable.

Sincerely,
Wilbur