Every summer from 1992 to 1994 I spent eight weeks 3,000 miles from my home in Riverside, California at Camp Greylock for Boys in Greylock, Massachusetts.

I did not like this camp.  This was a camp for jocky, jewish, athletic, wealthy, northeastern kids.  And everybody had a nickname.  I remember Wombat, Peanut Butter, and Sharkie.  Putting them together now, they sound like partners at a cartoon law firm.  The sort of lawfirm that defends Acme corporation against allegations of unsafe products.  Rocket Boots should have breaks. End of story.

Nobody ever gave me a nickname, which is just as well, because it probably would have been, “California,” which is a little too prison-sounding for my taste.  I was not good at sports, so in an effort to entertain myself, I fucked with people.  For example, I  built elaborate narratives around the fictions that my sister was a cop in Compton and that I had had sex with my babysitter when I was 9.  It was around this time (ages 10-12) that I started to realize that my dream job was to be a Confidence Man and that my ideal career would be dating wealthy women and stealing their money.

In the meantime, I set up a number of semi-criminal operations at Greylock that I operated with gusto. By far the most successful operation was the import and sale of Pringles and Zippo lighters from the outside world.  Remember in Shawshank Redemption how Morgan Freeman was the guy that could get you a porno or a rock hammer or a Kazoo?  I was that guy at Camp Greylock.  And pre-adolescent boys went fucking bonkers for Pringles and Zippo lighters.

I was in cahoots with a couple of counselors that would go into town and buy the zippos and pringles for me.  One of them was named Robbie Hyman.  His nickname was ‘Buster.’  I would compensate the counselors and then turn around and sell, say, a ‘gun metal’ zippo which cost $25 at the mall to a 10 year-old kid for $100.  He would then go burn newspapers behind his bunk and feel like God.  Fair trade.  

Enter Lucas Horn. 

As the lore went, Lucas Horn worked for the FBI three seasons out of the year, but opted to spend his summers as a director of Camp Greylock.  He wore tight black t-shirts and aviator glasses.  He had a posse of veteran campers that flanked him and ached for his attention.  Also, Lucas Horn looked like a fucking asshole. 

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Lucas and I did not get along.  For the most part, I avoided him, but we would have run-ins once in a while.  He is the kind of guy I would give the finger to while my hands were in my pockets.  I would tell him that archery practice was going great, but in the hidden reaches of my jeans, two middle fingers were mocking his stupid face.

It might seem like I am being overly cruel to Lucas Horn.  After all, he is just an FBI agent who wants to relax during the summer, right?  What is so wrong with that? Being born with a douchey face doesn’t make a fella a douche, right?  Did I really have to Google his picture and put that text over it?  And then add that drop shadow so the text really popped?  Seems excessive.  Something must have happened.

It was the middle of my third and final summer at Greylock.  Even though I had never enjoyed it, I kept going back.  Mostly because if I stayed in Riverside, I would have become a meth addict.  I remember the OJ trial being a big deal that summer.  It was also the summer that I played Bill Sykes in the Greylock production of Oliver!.  I was really more of a Fagan, but there was no accounting for casting choices in the mid-nineties.  The Zippo and Pringle trade was booming.

One night, I decided to sneak out of my bunk and up to the dining hall to get some Lucky Charms.  It required a long walk up a dark hill and was expressly forbidden.  I would do this once in a while, partially for the adrenaline and partially because Lucky Charms are delicious.  

As I stood over the huge cereal buffet filling a bag with colorful treats, a light came on.  Standing there, relaxed, eating big seedless grapes, was Lucas Horn.  Attached to Lucas Horn’s head were his aviator glasses.  It was midnight.  Busted.

Lucas grabbed me by the collar of my shirt and put me in the golf cart he used to jet around camp.  In silence, we drove to the theater and stopped.  He motioned for me to enter as he ate his last grape.  The theater was warm and smelled of props and paint.  I spied Bill Sykes’ ridiculous paper mache top hat in the corner of the stage.  I was going to have to talk to the costume people.

Lucas put a chair on the stage facing the audience and motioned for me to sit. Then, silently, he turned the stage lights up to their brightest.  I couldn’t see more than two feet in front of me.  I was scared.  The entire camp was asleep.

Lucas told me that if I didn’t come clean about the lighters, I was going to be sent home.  His voice boomed from the shadows and he sounded like he was having fun.  In fact, he sounded like he was finally getting to play the cop he wanted to be.  

It was in those moments, scared shitless, surrounded by ill-wrought stage backdrops of Dickensian London that I realized how pathetic Lucas Horn really was. In the FBI, he probably did paperwork or answered phones and tried to ‘accidentally’ be at the same bars that the field agents hung out at.  I was certain he had a third nipple or a tiny penis.  Maybe when he was a kid, his camp nickname was “Wimpy,” and he was trying to compensate. 

He was shouting now and the lights were burning my eyes.  ”Where did you get the Zippos!?” he demanded.  I wondered why he didn’t seem to care about the Pringles, which, while not as profitable per item, did better as a volume business.  I kept my mouth shut.  Tears streamed down my cheeks, but I didn’t say anything.

“You’re out of here. You’re leaving!  It’s shits like you that try to ruin this place.  You are fucking done!  You are done!”

I was twelve.

The fact is, Lucas Horn’s charade was something I had heard about before.  In the murmurs of the Greylock criminal underworld - the gossip of the cigarette smokers, the laughs of the porno dealers, the hiccups of the beer drinkers - a lanky 16 year-old counselor in training named Kit had told me about the time Lucas had dragged him into the theater and put the lights on him.  It was Lucas’ favorite interrogation technique.  Kit told me that the key was to keep quiet no matter what.  Then Kit showed me a Polaroid of himself holding a bazooka in a basement and offered me a sip of his beer.

Lucas was tiring himself out.  It was past one in the morning and I hadn’t done anything to incriminate myself or others.  Silently, Lucas drove me back to my bunk and dropped me off.  I watched his golf cart buzz away.

Scared, sad, and proud, I took a few long munches of sweet, sweet, Lucky Charms and went to bed. 

For the curious, Lucas is the first person to appear in the video below.  Yeah, he is the one saying, “The most important thing to your son is the staff member and how they are going to interact with your child.”  An ironic statement and a poorly constructed sentence.  What a douchebag.