Capture The Assagi

Like the herd being lead to slaughter we were marched to Some Family Member Field and cut in two. Dark Horde and Light Horde. We had nothing but a tube sock and whatever wit we could muster. Pawns on a chessboard stood a better chance of surviving than we did tonight. In a distant corner of the field our generals met in secret to choose our team’s captain, our Assagi, golden child of the Light Horde. A kid with quiet confidence, cunning, and determination enough to stay in the game at any cost. If he were to have his sock pulled by an enemy Dark Horde combatant, the game was over — we were fucked — and we would be that much closer to “Lights Out” and bedtime. The goal was to keep our Assagi safe. To win we had to capture the Assagi of the Dark Horde.

The goal should have been. I could give a fuck. I brought my tube sock to the field but cared not about the impending battle. When the camp counselors were speaking into their palms regarding the identity of our human Capture The Flag flag I was already halfway across the field, sneaking away near the giant teepee, moving toward the barely-there hiking trail which snaked its way up to the top of the camp’s property. My goal was not to capture the Assagi. My goal was to meet Blair and smoke cigarettes while standing around in the woods looking cool in front of nobody.

Blair and I weren’t dating. We had never even kissed. We possessed that awkward blend of sexual tension that 14-year olds often produce when they know it is an inevitability but neither boy nor girl has the guts to make a move. The closest we got to making out was one Friday night before shul when we met on Somebody’s Court and sat there, practically in each other’s laps, talking about stuff and things. Blair rested her head on my shoulder and slid her hand up the leg of my nylon basketball shorts until she found me and started to stroke. With the exception of her hand pumping me off neither of us moved an inch. We were like two frightened critters staring down imaginary headlights. Had anyone been able to see our faces we were probably turning blue from not breathing. After a minute or two a voice rained down on us from above, from the large building at the center of camp where the important people lived. The head counselors and division leaders. It was J.R., the corn-fed NCAA athlete who hated my guts because I liked to get high on top of Grandpa Hall at night before bed with my friends. J.R. wanted nothing more than to kick my or my bunkmates asses for not respecting him. But he was no more than six years our senior so why should any of us have cared what he had to say?

“Hey Fucker, why aren’t you back in your bunk?” He shouted down from on high. Blair flinched and took her head off my shoulder as I turned towards J.R.’s voice. She slid her hand out from my shorts and placed it palm down on the court between us.

“Go to your bunk…and get dressed…for Friday night services.” He spoke slowly and enunciated each syllable. As if I was some kind of retard. I didn’t respond, I simply stood up and left Blair there on the court.

I probably couldn’t have come for Blair right on Some Dead Guy Court anyway, but part of me wondered if J.R. knew what was going on between us. That was last week. Now J.R. was preoccupied with officiating the big Capture the Assagi game and I was walking up the trail to meet Blair for a cigarette. She smoked Marlboro Reds, same brand as my father, and every time I inhaled I hated myself that much more. I hated smokers. I hated my father for smoking.

Blair was standing near the rock were my cousin Rachel once buried my dead chameleon when she was a camp counselor here. Blair was at Dead Chameleon Rock with Kimberly, the biggish blonde with the heaving chest and crooked nose. Kimberly had jerked me off last week behind Auntie’s Playhouse — where we had Friday Night Services — and now we weren’t speaking to one another. Blair was wearing a pair of blue jeans and a salmon colored round-neck t-shirt whose collar swooped down below her clavicle. She was cute for a Jewish girl. The general plainness of her facial features were highlighted by her jet-black hair and bright green eyes. She had a tight little body. The opposite of Big Kimberly and her dye-job blonde hair, giant cans and crooked nose. Her look screamed New Jersey.

“What’s with the tube sock?” Blair said pointing at the thing tucked into the waistband of my shorts. She put two cigarettes to her lips and lit them both. She was cool with my being a non-smoker.

“It’s Capture the Assagi night,” I said as I grabbed the sock and windmilled it around my head. “I think I’m out-of-bounds. If I was the Assagi this would get my team disqualified.”

“Are you the Assagi?”

“Hell no. I’m a sock puller. An Assagi hunter. The game wouldn’t last five minutes if I was the chosen one. Where would I hide?”

“Out-of-bounds.”

We stood there awkwardly smoking, me holding back a cough with each inhalation of smoke and the two of them looking at each other and then back at me smiling.

“Kimberly, go cover for me. Tell Brenda I’m at the infirmary. I twisted my ankle.”

Kimberly trudged off through the woods without a word. It was me and Blair. Standing and smoking. Looking cool in front of nobody.

“Wanna see what’s up at the Playhouse?”

“Nah, that’s in-bounds. I think buildings, here and the lake trail are out-of-bounds.” I didn’t know that for a fact. I just didn’t want to go back to the Playhouse. It would remind me too much of hook-nosed Kimberly and the painful tug job she gave me last week. I think she drew blood.

“What’s up at the Rocketry Room?”

“Nothing. Does Rocketry still exist?”

“I don’t know. It’s been five years.”

We walked in silence up to the top of the camp’s property and then made sure to travel back through center of camp at least fifty paces apart. I hung back and played like I was on the hunt for the Dark Horde’s Assagi, and she walked ahead with a dubious limp. Kids with tube socks in their shorts raced all around us. I yelled to a bunkmate that a traitor for the other team let slip that the Russian kid from Bunk Pine was their Assagi. I watched his eyes widen as he changed directions and raced towards Boys Campus. Sucker.

The Rocketry Room was still there. It was housed in the same building as where J.R. and the other head counselors and division leaders stayed. To get inside you had to enter at the bottom floor. The room was accessible only by a small screen door on the side of the building. Rocketry was next to Radio. The lights were off inside. Both rooms were empty.

When I walked in the door she attacked me without a word. Her small hands gripped my cheeks and pulled my head down towards her. I backed up until I hit the wall, then sank to the floor. She climbed into my lap and started grinding into me. I tried to unzip her jeans but found a series of buttons. I was nervous and the task at hand was complicated. I yanked wildly and a few buttons popped free. I could see the trim of her pink patterned panties and went to rip them right off of her. At the first sight of her pubic hair I came. I was done. I pushed Blair off me and stood up. I didn’t want her to find out what happened.

“I should go. J.R.’s been on the warpath lately and he could be upstairs.”

Blair looked hurt. She turned away to button her jeans and didn’t speak.

“Assagi time!” I chirped. I rushed out the door and down the road back to Some Family Member Field.

The game was over. The Dark Horde had infiltrated our army and discovered the identity of our Assagi. Our generals, the dumb oafs, had gone and given the title to Keith Goldstein — the most athletic, most-popular kid in our division. He made for an easy target. Even though Keith managed to remain hidden for a while, people caught on. When the kid whose friends with everyone goes missing it raises suspicions. In this case the Dark Horde guessed right. He was our Assagi. I tried to make myself blend in with the crowd. My bunkmate strolled over and punched me in the arm for lying about the Russian kid. The Russian was in fact on our team. Friendly fire claimed his life. A shitty casualty in an war we never asked to fight. When my bunkmates asked where I was I said I had my sock pulled quickly. I was sitting drinking bug juice in the mess hall.

I never told my friends what happened with Blair in the Rocketry Room. I also didn’t tell them about how she stroked me off on the last night of camp while our entire division was locked in the mess hall, forced to watch movies until sunrise. It was during Major League. I sat in the back on a window ledge, and from her chair below me she reached up and got me off. After that night we never spoke. She didn’t return to camp the next summer. I returned for three more tours before calling it quits. By the end of it I was just there to get high on the roof of Dead Guy Hall and sell food and porno magazines to younger campers at heavily inflated prices.

I sometimes think about those summers and how they shaped the ensuing years of my life. Little changed for the next decade. I possessed neither the heart nor the ambition to be an Assagi. I avoided the game and lived out-of-bounds. In high school, in college, and for a while after that. Where others were competitive I was apathetic. I was an anti-Darwinian role model. Time and youth got away from me at some point. As it does for all of us. We tend to forgot how rapidly hands rotate around clocks. They never do stop moving. As best I can tell an Assagi has no age. Any one of us could take up the cause at any time. I guess it just depends on whether or not you care enough.

***

Teenbeaters – A-Train Coming
Odd Future – Drop (By Earl Sweatshirt)