My failure as a cad
 

I was still fifteen at the beginning of the summer that I got a job in the kitchen at a summer camp even though the required age was sixteen and I only reached that age by the end of August.
 

I was bunked at first with a cabin full of twelve year olds, but eventually, I was enticed to go and live with my older 18 year old co-worker in a double staff cabin. 
 

“Hey,” he said, “why do you want to hang out with the little kids?  They would cramp my style.  I can stay up as late as I want.   I can bring girls into my cabin and even sneak in a drink every once in a while.”
 

He grinned his sneaky grin at me and laughed.  “Come on really, doesn’t it bug you that you have to keep a low profile with all the kids around you?”
 

“But the kids really like me and I think they would not want me to go.”  I proffered as a response.
 

The devilish grin reappeared and he said, “Man, that must bug you, having all those kids around.  You probably have to keep your bunk as clean as theirs.  Come with me and live free.   You don’t even have to get up when they do, especially on Saturdays and Sundays.”  Here he lowered his voice and put his arm around my shoulder.   “I’m telling you I get a lot of action.  You could do worse than bunk with me.  You might even learn something.”
 

And he did hit on my key weakness.  I was lazy and did not like cleaning up.  There was something about the way he talked that hinted at something illicit  all the time, even if he was talking about going to wash up.  His talk always implied that there would be some kind of wild uncontrolled activity that I could not indulge in while bunking with the campers.  I gave in and moved in with him, looking for that elusive sense of being cool and more mature than the campers.
 

It took him a while to tell me much about girls or for me to experience the joys of this much vaunted freedom.   Mostly, I just lived in squalor and slept in more than before.
 

I guess I was supposed to learn from watching him flirt with the girls who worked in the kitchen.  He always wore his service hat a little to the back and was usually dressed in jeans, pointed boots and short sleeve shirts that were rolled up even higher on the arms.  He would often be chewing on a toothpick or have it hanging out of the corner of his mouth. 
 

One of the girls, Doris, was a blonde who lived in Haliburton but worked at the camp.   He would hang around her, teasing her, putting his hands on her arms or around her waist, suggesting they take off and go to the bar in town.  She teased him right back.
 

After a few weeks of this, she finally agreed to bring him along with her when her girl friends from town came to pick her up in a truck.  
 

“Where are you going?” I asked.
 

“We’re blowing this place.  Hey there’s room for one more in the truck. Wanna come along for the ride? Me and Doris here could use the company when we do wild things together later.”  He pinched Doris who squealed and giggled.
 

I wanted to answer, thinking this was one of those promised occasions where he would teach me something but I suddenly realized he wasn’t talking to me.   He was looking past me at Wendy, the other quieter kitchen girl with dark hair in a pony tail, a round freckled face and a seriously large bosom.
 

“Yeah, like you can actually do anything wild,” she laughed sarcastically.
 

“Come on, look I saved you a spot.”  He patted the spot beside him as he moved closer to Doris and put his arm around her.
 

Doris looked at him disdainfully but did not remove his arm.
 

“Come on, come on,” he cajoled.  “I know you Wendy.  You’re not really as quiet as you act.  Let’s go and party.”  He held up a small flask of what looked like whiskey.
 

Doris piped up, “Come on girl, I’ll protect you.  Besides,” she glanced over at him. “You have to admit he is cute.”
 

Wendy walked over to the truck and made a face.  “You can just take off.  I’m not going if I have to say he’s cute.  He’s just a good time Charlie and I know what kind of good time he’s looking for.”   
 

He laughed and put both arms around Doris, “the same kind you’re looking for but you won’t admit it.”   Doris took a swig from the flask and kissed him.  They both laughed and the truck took off.
 

Wendy was left standing in the dust.  I was just an observer, about ten feet further away.
 

She came back to me, shaking her head.  “Doris is gonna get him in trouble, you can bet on it.   Her boyfriend is gonna be real pissed off.  I just don’t understand what he sees in her anyway.  She’s so cheap.  How come you still bunk with him?”
 

“He’s not too bad.  He tells a lot of jokes and gets me laughing.  Really, he’s not so bad.”
 

She had a skeptical look on her face.  “Well, he should stop going after cheap girls and maybe then I’ll believe he’s not so bad.”
 

When I told him about this conversation the next afternoon, he just grinned and said, “I love girls because they almost always have hope.”  And then he laughed.
 

I had no idea what he meant so I asked him.
 

“Girls always love to reform the sinner.  They have hope because they always think they can save you if you’re bad enough.”
 

Then he looked at me appraisingly.  “That’s your problem,” he said. “You’re too good.”
 

“How do you be bad?”
 

“Just let them know that you’re willing to go all the way with them but do it in a way that gives them the idea you want them because you think they’re great, smart, beautiful, talented, whatever rings their bell.”
 

“That’s it?  But what if you don’t really think those things?”
 

“You have to keep your eye on the ball.  What is it you want them for?  If you want to have fun and sex, then tell them anything that will flatter them and you tease them, you let them think you’re a little bit dangerous but you let them know you’re interested.”
 

That evening I tried this on a girl with braces and glasses at camp who everyone made fun of and who was herself highly sarcastic.  I told her I found her very attractive and wanted to kiss her.  I took her hand and looked deeply into her eyes and told her I had been wanting to say this to her all summer.   She just looked at me almost dazed and I kissed her.  She sighed and when I pulled her after me, she followed.  I ended up having a passionate embrace with her in back of the milk shed, feeling her rubberized brassiere and French kissing her as my bunk mate had suggested.  She sighed again as I whispered in her ear, again just he had predicted.  But I could not feel anything except a smaller shrunken sense of self, a hard cold core of calculation and planning, so I just told her we had to go.  I did not repeat the exercise with her and she was angry with me for the rest of the summer.
 

The following day and for some time thereafter, I noticed a change in my bunk mate.  He stopped flirting with Doris and spent all his time talking with Wendy.   He asked her what her plans were and told her a little about himself.  They went for a walk along the lakeshore in the afternoon and at work, he now started to tease her, passing little comments on how attractive she looked.  Instead of being sarcastic, she started to respond to his comments by turning red.
 

Now Wendy said to me, “You know, he’s really not bad, just like you said.  He’s kind of an imp, really and he does make me laugh.  There might be hope for him after all.”
 

A few weeks after this, Wendy fell very quiet in the kitchen and there was no longer any banter between them.   I asked my colleague what had happened.
 

He grinned.  “I finally got into her pants.  Damn that took longer than I thought but I had her up in the arts and crafts building and we were going hot and heavy and I pushed her onto the table and pulled her pants off.   She wanted it right then but I didn’t have a safe.”
 

I felt a mixture of disgust and curiosity so I asked, “What did you do?”  
 

He laughed and then the impish grin appeared.  “I grabbed one of the balloons they had up there and used it.  She was pissed off with me afterward and cried like a baby but what do I care.   I got what I wanted.”
 

When I saw Wendy later with red eyes, I asked her what had happened.   She did not want to talk about it, so I let her be.
 

Over the next few weeks, I grew to feel a tremendous sense of anger, frustration and self-pity.   I had actually liked Wendy and we had had many serious conversations about our selves, our hopes and aspirations but I had never dared to ask for a kiss.
 

It was almost at the end of the summer before I got up the nerve to try and kiss her when I walked her to her cabin.  She pushed me away. 
 

“I really don’t want to do this,” she said.
 

I could not contain my anger or my outburst.  “Why not, you were quick enough to have sex with my bunk mate.”
 

Her face turned white.   “He told you that?  He’s lying.”  She burst into tears.  “What a son of a bitch!  What a cad!  Don’t you be like him.  Don’t ever be like him,” she said, then kissed me, then slapped me.  My cheek felt a searing heat and my eyes teared.
 

“Look,” she said, “You’re very nice, you’re a cute boy, but you’re just a boy.   What you said hurt me so deeply.  I thought we were friends.”  She was crying but she quickly brushed away the tears and with red eyes reached out her hand and took mine.
 

“You have a long way to go before you’re a man.  I hope you make it.  But never speak to me of this again.”
 

She turned and went into the cabin.
 

My face still stung from the slap.  How could I explain that the real shame, the real wound I suffered was to realize that she had given her affection to my bunk mate, that she had fallen for his shtick when I thought she was too smart for that?  And what was worse, I had wanted to be him, I had wanted to be a cad who knew how to get sex from women and I still do not know to this day if I was angrier at him, at her or at myself for not being able to be as rotten as he was.