Camp Lotus

Chapter 1: The Drive

Like I said in restartindg sooo here ya go.
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Laurens

I stare out the window of my brother’s car, Panic! At the Disco playing from my phone through my earbuds and my book bag leaning against my leg. There are mostly just wild flowers and trees outside. At one point we passed a small house but that was over half an hour ago.

My brother glances at me then looks back at the road.

“Julia?” he says.

The name hits me like a punch. Of course I’m not out yet. My family is filled with homophobes and transphobes.

I pause my music and look at him. “What?” It sounds harsher than I meant it to be. “Sorry, what?”

“If you meet anyone you like, send me a letter.” He winks.

I roll my eyes and look back out the window. “Just drive.”

Hamilton

I climb into Martha’s car, pulling my book bag with me. Today is the first day of camp. Washington and Martha always went a day early to get the teacher situated then came back to pick me up the next day. Hamilcat follows me into the car and jumps into my lap. He’s fluffy and black and is softer than Lafayette's hair. I scratch behind his ears and he purrs and lies down. After a few seconds, he’s asleep and Martha gets into the car.

I carefully lean down and grab my notebook out of my bag. I start writing. It’s about nothing in particular at first but then it morphs into paragraphs of what I would like to see change.

Every summer I go to a summer camp run by my adoptive parents. It’s an arts camp so of course there’s a large amount of LGBTQA+ involved, myself included (though I’m not out to anybody yet). Every time I think of something like this something different pops into my head.

Sometimes it’s about marriage. If we don’t have to vote on heterosexual marriage (or bi with an opposite sex partner) why must we vote on same-sex marriage? Is it because it bothers those Christians who use the old testaments as an excuse for homophobia even though, 1) it was technically translated wrong, b) the new testament said to not judge (yet what are you doing homophobes?) and 3) wasn’t the whole point of Christ’s death so you wouldn’t any longer be bonded to the testaments?

Sometimes it’s about bathrooms. Transgender people are being told to use the restroom for the gender they were assigned at birth but that’s not the one they feel comfortable with. There’s a difference between being transgender and just pretending. The common thread I've noticed about these two things is that they often forget about the other genders beyond male and female. They forget about gender fluid, agender, bigender, and others.

We need to stop forgetting that other genders exist too we need to stop saying that transgender aren’t actually boys or girls and we need to stop deciding that someone can’t get married just because their marriage is different from yours.

I press the pen to the paper, adding the last period, then look up.

We pull into the parking lot and Martha stops the car close to the office. I climb out, pulling my bag with me, and walk into the building. I’m in charge of camper check in. Yay.

It’s actually quite fun I get a bunch of highlighters and draw on myself or write until a camper shows up. Lafayette and Hercules are usual here pretty early so they join me.