Cotton Candy Dreams

It was the night before the annual major trip and two of our camp counselors, devout yeshiva bochurim from Israel, threw down the gauntlet. “The Rebbe gave up his life with mesirus nefesh for the yeshiva,” they declared. “The Rebbe said that shmiras haeynayim, guarding your eyes, is its most important value.”

We huddled around them outside our bunk as we watched the line at the canteen from afar, where the younger campers were quickly clearing the last bags of Paszkez potato chips and Shufra chocolate bars off the shelves.

“Are we going to take a trip to a place like this, to a place where you can’t go daled amos without encountering pritzus and shmutz?” Shmulik, the older of the two, asked, the veins on his neck protruding in agitation. “Feh!” his companion said with a grimace.

I was in the yeshivas kayitz program. As a budding  yeshiva bochur, I was expected to spend the better part of my day studying, and only a few moments of sports were begrudgingly allowed to disrupt our academic routine.

During years past, all year long I looked forward to the freedom and excitement of summer camp. And all summer long, I looked forward to the trip to the amusement park, counting down the days to the trip that took us to a place just over the state line geographically, but a million miles away, spiritually.

In the past, on the morning of the trip, our testosterone-charged teenage counselors would rouse us at dawn, race us to the dining room for a quick breakfast of sugary cereal to fuel the day. With shaky stomachs we’d board our yellow school buses for the long ride and fall back to sleep. Ah! That feeling of stepping groggy-eyed off the bus with the gleeful sounds of ‘Rome’ shocking us awake. The hum of the roller coaster engines, the forbidden aromas of funnel cakes and ice cream and an endless stream of laughter and cheering filling the morning air. Aside from a few moments of rushed prayer, it was a day of pure, hedonistic pleasure.

Now, while our sporting activites were drastically limited, and we were no longer partaking in the camp’s color war contests, field days, or playing games in the camp’s enormous activity room, we would still have our trip, the one significant respite from our days of grueling study.

Except, someone had been stupid enough to inform our two counselors that the amusement park now had a water park. Hardly approving of this amusement park business to begin with, they were now positively adamant that it was no place for a young yeshiva bochur. These two zealots found sympathy among the educational staff at the camp and even with many of the campers, who were more than happy to take up an extreme cause. Even I was touched by their passion, although inside I was conflicted. I loved the amusement park. But the proper thing for me to do was to join the growing chorus of protest and take the lead of our counselors: We wouldn’t defile our recently Bar Mitzvahed souls by going to a place of such profound immodesty.

The camp administrators, however, were not about to cancel a trip that cost tens of thousands of dollars. Neither would they allow us teenagers to remain behind in the near-empty camp.

They called our bluff.

“You don’t like the amusement park, then stay outside the gates, in the parking lot,” they declared.  “And bring along your gemoras. You’ll have plenty of time to study.”

Of course the two staff members who kicked up the whole ruckus would do nothing of the sort; they stayed back and had a leisurely day at the camp. They waved us off, patting their bellies and stroking the towels swung over their shoulders in preparation for their morning dip in the mikvah.

At the park, all of us who had joined the protest were stuck in the sun-drenched and vacant picnic area with only a few books for company, as a symphony of music and excited shrieks wafted over us.

And just like that, my determination evaporated.

“I– I need to-– I need to go check on Yankele Kopp,” I blurted out to my friends. “He needs extra attention.” And off I ran, through the gates and into the crowds.

Too guilt-ridden to go on any of the rides or play the arcades, I hungrily soaked up the sounds, the smells and the sights. I stared at the skimpy tank tops and the long, naked legs crowned by beautiful bums covered in the shortest of shorts,  boisterous girls with tanned skin, pedicured feet in flip flops, their young, full breasts trying desperately to escape the confines of string bikinis.

Heart beating in my throat, I struck up a  short, if purely practical, conversation with a girl who looked my age, and asked her for directions. I can still see the plain, goyishe features of her face and the innocent carelessness in her eyes that seem to flow from life filled with fun and excitement. There was a lump in my throat as she directed me politely. I heard not a word, as my mind drifted to a faraway forbidden place.

On that day at the Amusement Park I was filled with a lust that I never experienced before. Perhaps it was the anticipation built during the night prior to the trip, through righteous conversation about the evils of sinful images. Of course we only spoke in code, God forbid, we would never describe a woman’s body or her dress in explicit terms. But each time our teacher brought up the issur of looking at anything tumah, I am sure that I was not the only one who found focusing on that commandment arousing.

After that summer, we never went back to that park. The camp replaced the spiritually dangerous thrills of the amusement park with trips to a local farm and picnics in a lakeside field. But that first taste of lust, stirred up by the passions of those two Israeli counselors, never left me. It grew inside of me, like cotton candy spinning on a stick, filling me with sweet desire.