Most of us have seen Friday the 13th and the horrors of Camp Crystal Lake. Maybe, if you’re lucky, you’ve seen 2010’s Camp Hell, where evil destroys Camp Hope. All those girls without bras and impossibly sweaty boys chugging sweaty beers.
I never went to a sleepaway camp as a kid; but, I have been to the adult sleepaway camp otherwise known as the professional conference.
We academics know it well. We spend hours putting together panel proposals so we can convince our schools that the opportunities for professional development benefit them, too. We write our panel presentations on the cheap flight. We check in at the cheap hotel that’s close, or close enough, to the convention center filled with women in gratuitous scarves no matter the season, and men wearing shirts, for once, not tucked into khakis because, you know, this isn’t work.
Last weekend, I was in LA for an annual creative writers’ conference. During the day, the conferees cased the bookfair, looking for potential publishers and presses. The prototypical exchange:
“I’m writing a book about [insert summary here]. It’s [insert self-stroking adjective here] with a nod to [insert theoretical paradigm and/or specific literary period to be real pretentious here].”
Example: “My name is Martha and I’ve just finished my novel about a young girl who moves to Switzerland to study curling. It’s a real page-turner with a nod to the psychoanalytic realism of 18th century British Romanticism.”
All the -isms.
The freaks really came out each night at the conference-sponsored dance party. [Insert white people trying to dance to Drake’s “Jumpman,” jumping on the wrong beat, no doubt wishing the DJ would just play “Jump Around” here.] Everyone forgot about their spouses at home, the kids, the bills and bosses. What else is there to do but mack under the disco ball? They were out on bail, junk to junk with people who got them, people who wanted everything they wanted.
The critical mistake: ain’t got no sense.
No massacre, really. Just makeout sessions and sexual frustration. Guy in the striped polo is always too drunk to get it up.
The consequence: the [insert ill-advised use of “hella” here] hangover on the early flight back home, where you immediately trash that button-down ripped at the collar. And sore muscles from “the too old to get low without stretching” moves.
There’s no consequence for me, fortunately. I never have to walk that walk of shame from my suitcase to the kitchen for a lawn and leaf bag. But I do have next year’s conference, where I, no doubt, will run into that married guy I didn’t know was married (or maybe I did) at the W.W. Norton booth where he’s now pushing the sequel to his historical novel, a blatant Last of the Mohicans rip-off.
He says he’ll be the Natty Bumppo to my Cora. A real explor-a.
New massacre: classics turned into cheesy come-ons.
He’ll give me his room number. My dance card will already be full.
This article appears in Apr 7-13, 2016.