Date: Sat, 29 Jul 2017 13:25:23 -0400
From: Orson Cadell <orson.cadell@gmail.com>
Subject: Canvas Hell 33

Please see original story (www.nifty.org/nifty/gay/camping/canvas-hell/)
for warnings and copyright. Highlights: All fiction. All rights
reserved. Includes sex between young-adult men. Go away if any of that is
against your local rules. Practice safer sex than my characters. Write if
you like, but flamers end up in the nasty bits of future stories. Donate to
Nifty **TODAY** at donate.nifty.org/donate.html to keep the cum coming.

*****

"What the hell was that?"

"I don't know, Red, but I hope to hell he either never does it again or,
um, does it several times a day!"

*****

Canvas Hell 33: Chrysalis

By Bear Pup

T/T; self-discovery - Friday PM

***** Note: This is a very short chapter for a reason.

We were conscious, at least, when Karl returned. When a nude Karl bent over
to don his undies, I really did think Jim was going to crack (pun intended
-- oh, so very much intended). To give you an idea of just how much the
scent then the show affected Jim, he didn't even *start* to chatter until
we were halfway to the Mess Hall.

Trey was about to have a seizure when he saw the food. He literally
sprinted back to the cabin to retrieve an extra bottle of hot sauce. The
campfire cooks had slow-roasted pork loins on the bone. They'd covered one
of the campfire rings with a portable awning-style tent thing and lowered
the legs, then put the rack for the roasts just underneath. The result was
slow-roasted, juicy, smoky perfection sliced to order off the bone and
absolutely one of the best pork dishes I have ever had, before or since.

Next to the roasts was a vat of crap none of us could identify with beans
and rice and veggies that Trey rapturously called Hoppin John. Black-eyed
peas stewed with the rice to create scrumptious side and a thick,
onion-filled gravy to top everything off. The veggie tonight was rather
tragic; I assume there is a way to make creamed corn non-toxic, but I've
never seen it. The alternative dish was a rather nice-looking chowder of
corn and chicken. I had a small bowl of that just to taste and it was
excellent.

And Trey was right. The Hoppin John was delicious... right up until you
added that hot sauce when it became transcendent. To this day, a bone-on
pork loin with Hoppin John and onion gravy is my absolute favorite
meal. They'd even managed a dessert that they called Praline Pie. Only
about as thick as two pencils atop one another, it was creamy and thick
with a brittle top, filled with pecans, all of that in a flaky crust.

The Campfire Cooks were beaming with pride at the praise and even
applause... right up until the growling started. It turns out that after
nearly three weeks of Chef's palate abuse, running out of really, really
good food was a Very Bad Plan. Especially the Praline Pie. Land, Sea and
George had to step in and create a bodyguard-barrier. The cooks promised
with remarkably-shaky voices to have lots, lots more the next day. Like,
really promised.

Song practice was another slam dunk, with Willie increasing his
confidence. He would, without question, end his summer at Camp
Sinnemahoning a new man indeed. The rain had finally subsided to a
desultory trickle. When the session broke, we told Trey and Nate that it
was probably a waste of time to come see us; we were trashed from the
day. "Anyway," Karl added, "I have a few more things to ask Jim, here."

Jim clearly was considering a night in the Cabin, but neither Karl nor I
gave him any such chance. The fact that Nate whispered, "Um, good
luck. And, well, you really were a great guy, Jim," did very little to calm
our tent-mate. Everyone want *to be* a great guy; no one want *to have
been* one, though.

Tent Canvas Hell was damp and smelly when we got there. Two days without a
real airing (including a night when five guys came eight times in the open
air) left clear signs. We rolled open the flaps and, as luck would have it,
the wind came up to a strong breeze, angled from behind the tent and
whisking away the cloying scent.

Jim was terrified, but Karl was merely contemplative. "Jim, I don't
understand. What is it about Red and me that people, you know, care about?"

Jim seemed to melt in the 'not being killed right away' atmosphere. "I
don't know, Karl. On that first day, everybody was, just, everyone. Maybe
everybody was nobody? I dunno. There were guys everyone was talking
about. Big guys, funny guys, strong guys, tough ones, too. But..."

Jim got contemplative as well, and thought a long time before
continuing. "...they all *knew* it. They played it up, you know? The
gathered guys into teams or packs or whatever, like... planets in their
orbit? The had to be the center. The next day, you talked to me, the kid
the worst of them, The Buggers, had trounced. You accepted me, I mean a
kid, and didn't treat me like a serf, just as another person. I mean,
everyone wanted to see why. You are older and cool and both so, you know,
older. I said that. Whatever.

"Anyway, you guys make it so Winner gets gone, Major dragging him by an
EAR, and the next day," Jim's voice went flat, cold, quiet, trembling,
"Mikey and Bobby did, um, that." His voice vanished for a minute, like a
moment of silence for a tragic event. "And, Karl, everyone in the Mess Hall
saw that you were ready to murder them. And Red pulled us both out. And,
remember, I'm *nobody*! And you were both there to take on the world for a
*nobody*."

"Jim, you are not--"

"Oh, shut up, Patrick. Seriously. In camp this size? I'm friggin
nobody. And then -- this is the part that everyone thinks is too weird --
you two say NOTHING. Broke Winner's gang and destroyed them. Took on the
toughest and nastiest, the ones everyone were scared of and hated. And you
don't strut. You don't make up a team or a gang or a pack or whatever. You
don't even *notice* people who try to say, 'good job' or 'that's cool'. Red
-- okay, don't kill me; this is other people -- Red is like, thinking
deeper thoughts that the rest of us could even know and Karl is like, all,
'Dum-dee-dum. Well, it's Tuesday. That's the way Tuesdays
go... dum-dee-dum'."

"Dum... Dee... Dum...?"

Jim hurried on, "Well, you know, like it was just another day. Nothing to
get fussed over. And it just... snowballed. From then on, everything you
guy did got all... mythical? If you caught a fish, it was a whale. If you
paddled a canoe, it skimmed over the water. If you said hello, you
conferred some sort of magic shield around a guy. If you had found a penny,
it would have been a doubloon by lights out. I think... I think the real
kicker, though, was the canoe race that second Monday."

"What? Why?" Karl was utterly nonplussed.

"Because we came in second on both ends."

"Right. That should have put a stop--"

"No. That we came in second on both ends and you were both... happy. More
than happy. Really jazzed. At coming in *second*. Any other Big Shot -- you
know what I mean -- would have been cursing and furious that they got
beat. Wanting a rematch of something. And you were beaming like you won a
jackpot, and Red smiled like he had the secrets to the universe tucked into
his waistband! Then, to top it off, the... the, um, misunderstanding when
we were fishing afterwards. Everyone saw me, uh, upset. And Karl looking
murderous and Red mournful. No one knew what happened but the whole camp
was buzzing with Trouble in Tent Nine.

"And then, BAM, everything was fine again. And then Nathan and Orson --
Nate and Tex, then Trey -- and what you did with Willie on the
singing. Anyway, that's it. You guys can't sneeze without it becoming a
story by nightfall. I didn't do it, well, not much. It was all you guys and
what you did and how you treated people. Everyone wants to be one of you,
or both. If not, maybe at least be close to you? Around you? Like you? So,
um, you guys get it now?"

For the first time in about half an hour, I spoke. "No, and I doubt I ever
will. But I'm not freaked anymore."

"Really? WHY?" Karl asked.

"Because they're not talking about me," I shrugged and smiled
gently. "They're talking about this hero person who does all this cool
stuff and knows so much and makes things right and is named Red. It's not
me so I don't have to worry."

"No." Karl's voice was slow and certain and held a type of wonder or
discovery. "It *is* you." He was nodding slowly, too, as if everything
suddenly made sense. "Guys don't make up Red to tell tall tales about what
Patrick does. You're making up Patrick to deny who Red really is."

Jim went to the tent flaps and tied them shut now that the breeze had done
its work. I simply sat and stared around as Karl's few, spare words soaked
into my skin where Jim's had simply flowed over me in a wave. Jim chivvied
me out of my clothes and into my sleeping bag as Karl got himself into
bed. Jim was last in and first 'out', snoring softly. Karl fell asleep next
as I sat and continued thinking.

The instant, knee-jerk rejection had been possible when it was Jim and Nate
and Trey. People don't really know, so they pretend. Jim talks and talks,
and likes to make a good story. All just silliness and not at all related
to reality. But Karl? I'd never heard him exaggerate anything. He said
simple, direct, obvious things.

I'd come to Camp Sinnemahoning with a few absolute certainties. I was
always the last picked for sports because I really wasn't very good at
them. I was too... everything. Too tall, skinny, red-headed, freckled,
nearsighted, gangly, awkward, tongue-tied. My opinions never mattered to
people. I was ridiculously-unattractive. I was beyond merely boring and
uninteresting to the point of sheer uselessness. Most importantly, I was
absolutely terrible with people and was better off just hiding.

I started at the first day of camp. 'Opinions never mattered.' Karl had
been absolutely undone by the thought that I, me, Patrick, saw through him
and hated him that very first day, so much so that he hung around with
people he loathed and that made him hate himself. Nate and Trey's responses
when I told them they were really great guys. Willie and the singing. I
felt their respect pushing against me like a physical force.

'Boring and uninteresting.' The snake and the
centipede. Sq-Sq-Squirrel. The Streak. I felt the stories wrapping
tentacles around me. 'No good at sports.' Moved the very first day from
swimming to lifeguard. The canoe race. 'Unattractive.' This one I blushed
so hard that the tent glowed. Jim didn't find me unattractive,
apparently. 'Too... everything.' No one seemed to care other than me. Each
added a layer to the ever-tightening fabric around me.

The hardest was the most entrenched, the axiom around which my life had
worked for years. 'Terrible with people. Better off hiding.' My whole world
was, in one way or another, built around that simple, obvious fact. But...

What about Karl that first day, that first night, and getting him to admit
he wasn't a bad person? What about Jim after The Buggers? What about the
three of us, healing and helping each other, saving each other? What
about... the Kiss and getting Karl out of his nightmare during the storm?
What about... the KISS and learning to love Jim? What about Nate? Trey?
Willie? What about the look on Trey's face when I told him the hot sauce
was the best thing ever, or Nate when I told him he could be who he wanted.

My stress level went up and up and up as each fundamental truth about
myself was challenged right there in the fortress of my own
skull. Everyone's attention pulled tighter and tighter against me. The
transition from waking fretfulness to fretful sleep was invisible to me. I
was trapped, squeezed, pulped and smashed. I was suffocated, trapped,
crushed. I struggled and could not move. I wanted to scream but had no
voice. I wanted to cry but had no eyes or tears. I wanted it to stop and
had no defenses left, each wall had been breached, shattered, obviated. I
felt my last bit of breath leave me, my last desires fade, my last
self-image melt away. My last thought -- I knew it to be the last thought I
would ever have -- was simple and the final straw that broke me. 'I'm
sorry, Jim.'

<eof>

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Active storelines, all at www.nifty.org/nifty/gay...
Canvas Hell: 33 chapters .../camping/canvas-hell/
Beaux Thibodaux: 24 chapters .../adult-youth/beaux-thibodaux/
The Heathens: 26 chapters .../historical/the-heathens/
Lake Desolation: 18 chapters .../rural/lake-desolation/
Culberhouse Rules: 9 chapters .../incest/culberhouse-rules/
Raven's Claw: 7 chapters .../authoritarian/ravens-claw/
Ashes & Dust: 2 chapters .../rural/ashes-and-dust/