A-Camp 6.0 Recamps Part Four: Don’t Believe Me Just Watch

Once upon a time (May 30th-June 4th, to be specific) in a land far far atop a mountain two hours outside of sunny Los Angeles, approximately 300 queer humans — 250 campers, 50+ staff and talent — gathered for four days and four nights of revelry, intellectual stimulation, dance parties and deep sea bonding. They called it A-Camp 6.0, and it was beautiful! This is the fourth of four fantastic recaps which serve to ease our collective separation anxiety, give you a behind-the-scenes look at how your A-Campdyin soysage is made, enable us to wax nostalgic over times gone by and provide prospective campers with a brilliant glimpse into the A-Camp Experience from the Staff Side Of Things. (If you wanna know how it feels to be a camdelkper, you’ll have to come to camp!)

A-Camp was the genesis of an idea Riese had at 3AM in July 2010: the concept was to take the spirit of the website into three glorious dimensions by renting a summer camp in the off-season and jam-packing a long weekend with panels, workshops, discussions, crafts, sports, entertainment, parties and so much more! We gave the idea a spin with an abbreviated, smaller edition of A-Camp in April 2012, followed by full-size full-length camps in September 2012, May 2013, October 2013, May 2014 and May 2015.

This camp was our best camp yet. Seriously, we were very on top of our game. This required raising prices, but we think the extra expense was well worth it — I mean, we had a bouncy castle! We had an all-star cast of special talent: actress and DIY Queen Jasika Nicole, Everyone is Gay super-idols Kristin Russo and Dannielle Owens-Reid, musicians Julia Nunes, Jenny Owen Youngs and Mal Bum and comedians Brittani Nichols, Deanne Smith and Elicia Sanchez. Plus, Orange is the New Black’s Lauren Morelli showed up for an hilarious afternoon Q&A, Kimber Hall joined Brittani for improv and former Miss Kentucky Djuan Trent sang from her soul. A DELIGHTFUL TIME WAS HAD BY ALL.

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A-Camp 6.0, Day Five: Wednesday, June 3rd

THE FIRST-EVER A-CAMP STATE FAIR

Activities: Master Builders: Lego Edition, Swing Dancing, Art Gallery, Whiskey Tasting, String Cheese & Boxed Wine Tasting, Bitches Brew: Feminist Beer History and Tasting, Craft Beer Tasting, Tarot Card Reading, Gay Gardens, Sex Advice/Lube Tasting

Games and Sports: Geek Trivia, Arm Wrestling, Tug of War, Water Balloon Toss, Pie-Eating Contest, Midway carnival games, Pin the Tail on the Cow, Canny Crush, Hoop Dreams, Livestock Show, Double Dutch, Hayrides, Hula Hoop Contest

Events: Class & Camper performances, The OWL Storyslam, “Out Here” Film Screening, Singled Out w/Stef & Carmen, Magic Show, Queering Mars: A Talk With Joy Dunn of SpaceX

Crafts: Balm for the Soul: DIY Chapstick, T-Shirt Cutting and Stenciling, Face Painting, Hand Tattoos, Stick Ponies

Robin Roemer, A-Camp Co-Director: The morning of the fair Marni and I rolled out of our beds at 6:30am and looked at each other like “why did we do this to ourselves?” and then remembered it was Riese’s fault. JK. I mean it was her fault, but the fair was awesome and worth all of the crazy running around in the morning to set up!

Marni Kellison, A-Camp Co-Director: As I’ve said in the past, it wouldn’t be A-Camp if I didn’t dream up a somewhat complicated and over-engineered construction project for myself to execute before and/or during camp, and this year’s State Fair was my most ambitious project yet — two rows of PVC pipe midway booths tented with red fabric for the carnival games! The two sections were each 15 feet long, 7 feet high and 7 feet deep. Before camp, my dutiful girlfriend Kyle helped me cut all one billion lengths of pipe in an Emeryville Home Depot plumbing aisle, and single-handedly sewed 61 yards of red fabric for the tenting — we bought out everything at Joann’s and still needed more! Jasika Nicole sewed the gingham bunting trim!

Nikki, Intern: I was up really early to help with Fair set-up. I’m not normally a morning person but for tasks like this I try to be my best Nikki. I was moderately okay Nikki this morning of camp. It took me longer than normal to figure out the diagram for the Midway that Marni made.

Marni: Nikki, Bren and Megan were my early morning saviors.

Maddie Taterka, Firebirds Counselor: I got to help assemble The Midway and attach the red fabric to the PVC pipe with a shit ton of zip-ties, while standing on some precariously perched plastic chairs, which I think made Ali and Vivian very nervous.

Marni: The whole PVC pipe project turned out great and looked amazing at the Fair, despite one section eventually developing a serious gangsta lean and nearly toppling on Rachel and Lizz several times.

Robin: I was so grateful to have Nikki’s help who worked with a company down the mountain to get the concessions and the really fun inflatable boxing ring.

Carmen Rios, Rodeo Disco Counselor: Emily Gigler and I were super-involved in setting up for the State Fair, which made everything a lot more fun.

Emily Gigler, Midway Prince: The camp-wide hangout and have-a-wild-theme-party day is one of my favorite camp experiences, including the magical whirlwind of the whole scene coming together… in which I hulk every heavy thing to make some kind of a point to Carmen.

Abby Braughton, Captain Coordinator of Logistics: One of the best things about your girlfriend also being from the Midwest is that you grew up in state fair culture. It is our jam. Goat shows, 4-H contests, games that are impossible to win and especially HAY RIDES.

Riese Bernard, Runaways Counselor: We’re so obsessed with state fairs and county fairs but this summer I only went to one State Fair, and it was at A-Camp. (Okay actually we did go to one other State Fair in August, but it was the Michigan State Fair and it wasn’t even a real state fair ’cause apparently they pulled funding for it a few years ago and it was in the Hyatt Place parking lot. But we did get to see a lot of baby pigs, so.)

Carmen: When we were done trying to decide who was a little bitch among us, we helped Abby pimp out her hay-ride and then got a celeb tour of A-Camp in it. Sure, we almost died. But what’s a life not lived ON THE EDGE?

Abby: Some miraculous moments happened with this job, starting with when they went all Xzibit on my truck and made beautiful “HAY GIRL HAYYYYY” signs.

Abby: I was honored and privileged to give hay rides in my truck to the good folks of A-Camp.

Rory Midhani, Rodeo Disco Counselor: I liked the hay rides! I was rolling a cigarette in the smokers circle when I saw Abby’s truck driving up the hill with Gigler and Nurse V chillin in the back and I didn’t even think, I just dashed my things and ran my lil legs off and leaped onto that moving truck.

Abby: On one of the hay rides, as i turned on my truck I accidentally knocked the volume knob for the radio and it happened to be blasting Vitamin C’s “Graduation (Friends Forever).” Do you know what that’s like? To be driving a bunch of queers in hay bales in the back of your truck and the lyrics “as we go on, we remember, all the times we, had together…” drifting through the trees of Angelus Oaks? It was unreal. Absolutely. Unreal.

Laura Mandanas, Outsiders Counselor: This was my favorite day of camp because (after unloading all the hay bales in the morning) I finally got to spend some quality time with members of The Outsiders, aka the raddest tendergang on the mountain.

Stef Schwartz, Campires Counselor: I’m the worst and was late coming to help set up for the State Fair because I was having a quick band practice with Jenny, Julia and Mal. Marni and I had been trying to sneak in one practice a day, but we were still trying to arrange a couple of songs I had hoped to split between these three weirdos. We goofed around a lot, but in the end I think we came out with a plan, and I was pretty convinced we were going to slaughter that evening.

Riese: I woke up and was heading into the festival square when I realized the Merch Stand was MOBBED, it was like we were Yellowcard at Warped Tour or something, or maybe even Newfound Glory. Maybe even Blink 182! So I helped Bren out for as long as I could. Somebody asked what a “Tomboy Femme” was and someone else was like, “um, like her” and pointed at me. Into it.

Robin: I just love the idea that we were giving out tickets all day that got turned in for points that equaled a rainbow war win for bragging rights and you all still REALLY got into the spirit!

Yvonne Marquez, Shark Week Counselor: I was in charge of the inflatable boxing ring thing and I felt so legit with the whistle Robin gave me. Before the state fair officially started, I got to witness Gabby be the sweetest human to a tiny child. The tiny child (the daughter of an Alpine Meadows staffer) wanted to get on the inflatable boxing ring and with her mom’s permission, Gabby helped her in and jumped around with her for a bit. It was so cute!

Stef: When I finally made it to the State Fair, I’d been assigned to the Vegan Bobbing for Apples booth, but there weren’t any apples so the camp had given us nectarines. I had assumed that enthusiasm among campers would be low, since nobody would be interested in ruining their hair. As it turned out, I was pretty impressed by the lengths campers were willing to go to, particularly Mo Ucros, who dove directly into the tub and pretty much swam to the bottom before emerging triumphantly with a nectarine in their teeth.

Rachel Kincaid, Ghost Power Counselor: I was thrilled to work the vegan gluten-free soy-free paraben-free nectarine bobbing activity, because convincing people to do something mildly unpleasant for very little reward is a hobby I don’t get to indulge in often enough. I was proud and amazed at the number of people who went for it with gusto (and often succeeded, despite the un-ripe-ness of the nectarines)!

Maddie: Although I was assigned to ring toss, somehow I ended up sitting at the ticket booth for a very long time, tallying tickets you champions won doing fair games. It’s possible I rallied some Firebirds to make the red team’s showing more respectable, and I have to say, they came through. When it came down to it, though, the blue team unquestionably dominated in the fair-tickets category, with a hundred tickets coming in from a single camper!!

KaeLyn Rich, Shark Week Counselor: Uh, in response to Maddie’s above comment, that 100-ticket camper was June, champion of the bean bag toss and unrelenting blue team campaigner. Bravo, June. Bravo.

Cecelia White, Witchblades Counselor: As resident coordinator of the bean bag toss, I can testify that June was throwing bean bags all sorts of ways — with her eyes closed, backwards, and from twenty feet away. It was artistry. Everyone was actually surprisingly great at bizarre fair games.

KaeLyn: Farmer Rubber Duckies was a comedy of errors. I spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to figure out how to attach magnets to rubber ducks and how to tie magnets to sticks. An elaborate hot glue process is what happened. It was not cute, but it was functional. Then I accidentally turned off the water on one of the cooks while I was filling my ducky tub. Then I discovered that the magnet-laden ducks no longer floated upright because I’d upset the very balance of nature with my hot glue shenanigans. So the ducky tub was just decorative.

Cecelia: The hardest I laughed at anything this camp (besides during Elicia’s comedy) was at the absolute FARCE that turned out to be Farmer Rubber Duckies with KaeLyn. My booth was all high stakes and action, where bean bags tossed by my head at whiplash speeds. But sometimes I would glance over and see KaeLyn chilling next to a person with a focused and furrowed brow, keeled over a collection of rubber duckies. The whole fair moves around them, and Farmer Rubber Duckies becomes this silent meditative space of mastery, where the only thing keeping you from achieving your greatest desire is a string on a stick and a magnet hot glued to a rubber duckie. I admire KaeLyn for all of the blood sweat and tears she put into that experience.

KaeLyn: The deceptively simple game became just picking up a duck from the dry table with the magnet stick and, like, holding it in the air for 1 second or more. The unintended catch was that the magnets were not even a little bit strong, so it was like brain surgery trying to get the magnets aligned just so. More than one person gave up. Many prevailed. Farmer Rubber Duckies had much to teach us about patience, perseverance, and anger management. I feel we all became better people because of Farmer Rubber Duckies.

Chelsey Petty, Blackhearts Counselor: I was set to run the Canny Crush booth during the State Fair, which was right next to the face painting booth, so of course Abby and I got matching Gal and Pal tattoos.

Brittani Nichols, The Talent: Kimber and I spent three hours putting together the goddamn basketball hoop that came with the wrong sized nuts. The true hero of the day was zip ties. The fact that we had a good time doing this despite how frustrating it was is a testament to our friendship. I think it was worth it because it felt like for a couple of hours, the hoop was the surprise hit of the state fair.

Carolyn Wysinger, Firebirds Counselor: First I was running the boxing tent. I saved a couple of campers from being smothered when they feel into the cracks of the ring. I actually had to go behind and roll one out. Nurse Viv joked about what happenes if the nurse has to go to the hospital lol.

Laneia O’Jonsey, Runaways Counselor: I fulfilled a lost childhood fantasy of tallying colored tickets for campers via working the Ticket Booth! See, campers were awarded tickets that corresponded with their Rainbow Wars color, and it was the Ticket Takers job to tally their tickets and then record the number on a sheet of paper. I hope I made everyone’s day brighter just by being me. I did my best.

KaeLyn: I was determined to get in the freaking pool at least once at camp and I saw my window in the second half of the day. I had exactly ½ hour to get changed and into the pool. So I joined Cleo, the loneliest lifeguard (the pool was deserted), for a very brief dip.

Carolyn Yates, Fun Home Counselor: I had been looking forward to giving out sex advice and lube with Lizz, Liz and Ali (and lube-dispensing volunteers/Autostraddle WAGs Shannon and Chrissy) all week and after nearly passing out a few times from inflating small blow-up farm animals I was also excited to sit down in a tent in the shade. Everyone who dropped in was lovely and is definitely normal and definitely going to be okay. (Everyone who wanted to drop in but didn’t get a chance to should email youneedhelp [at] autostraddle [dot] com.)

Ali Osworth, Star Runners Counselor: Is it me, or was team NSFW especially wonderful this year, especially when we were giving advice at the State Fair? Gosh, I love figuring out solutions to problems. And I love talking about sex. And I love Lizz, Liz and Carolyn—they’re so smart, you guys. So smart, calm and wonderfully articulate about relationships and bodies in a world that discourages dialogue about those things when you’re a queermo or a woman or both.

Laura Mandanas, Outsiders Counselor: The sex toy raffle at dinner got my campers an obscene amount of lube. But my favorite thing by far was just like, hanging out in the sunshine and shade, chatting with these people that I love with all my heart.

Riese: I went to see Abby and Cee talk about farming and gardening at Gay Gardens. They are both so knowledgable so it was really cool — they even made a mini-zine! — even though Real Talk I will probably never garden anything (Abby will, obviously).

Sarah Hansen, Fun Home Counselor: I was so sick for the State Fair and so I mostly sat in The Barn and quietly discussed Stick Ponies with a handful of campers brave enough to make them, including two of my campers. Seriously, my campers were so sweet and supportive throughout camp, and always helped me when I was having trouble with something. Fun Home was full of the best humans I could have ever hoped to surround myself with, hands down.

Riese: One of the top benefits of having a cabin is that they are so sweet and will come to all of your activities and always want to help! On their vacation!

Gabby Rivera, The Beehive Counselor: I set up the Legos station with Heather, who is generally one of the best people to be around ever. We asked campers to build their ideal queer utopia and yo, they did!

Heather, Hogwarts Counselor: Legos are one of my all-time favorite things. Playing Legos with Gabby was even better than I could have imagined. You should have seen some of the queer utopias our different teams of campers created. Utopias in space. Utopias with free universal wi-fi. Utopias with vegan ice cream trucks. I wish A-Campers had enough money to build a real utopia!

Kip Reinsmith, A-Camp Barber: I spent mooosttt of Wednesday cutting hairz, but when I DID get a chance to peek around the State Fair, it was suppppper cute. My favorite was (Anal) Rubin screaming STEP RIGHT UP while she was doing ring toss or some such game in the middle of a really soulful camper performance on The Grandstand.

Kai Keller, The Beach Counselor: There were a ton of fantastic things going on all day and I wish I could’ve gotten to every single one of them. Specifically the boxing bounce house. It looked like so much fun. Also! This was the time that the badasses from The Beach showed me the MEGA-FLAG they stitched together after finding all three team color flags in the woods or wherever. They were goddamn warriors and I will always cherish that. There is no real way red team won color war without someone’s “help”. #bitter #teamyellowallday

Riese: Also, The Pie-Eating Contest was one of the most underrated moments of A-Camp. There was dancing, blackberry-smushed faces, messy dresses, blazing purple glory. It’s cute when people meet and fall in love at A-Camp, but honestly, the thing that warms my heart the most is seeing the everlasting tight friendships I know started at A-Camp — I remember meeting Gavin over a year ago and Gilles over three (!!) years ago when they came here knowing nobody and at totally different stages of their coming-out processes and lives and now they’re up there literally having the best time ever doing a lap dance for a blackberry pie. CAMP!

Rachel: I tried so hard to take a picture that captured how fulfilling and inspiring the pie-eating contest was, and I could not. It could not be done!

Carmen Rios: I was super busy once the fair was underway: we cut up a ton of shirts like brave heroes outside Wolf in the morning, and then I did the chair dance in the afternoon.

Rory: I watched chair dancing practice for a bit and I asked KaeLyn if it was okay for me to be there or if I was being the male gaze. KaeLyn said if I felt the need to ask, then I’m probably fine. But then I blushed and ran away anyway.

Kai: I spent the first half of the state fair rehearsing with a bunch of groups for the on-stage performances, which ended up being THE BEST. I have distinct memories of Kaylah being super in charge when the dance crews were going on stage. Popping off commands and shit. It was live. It was time to turn up.

Robin: The performances on The Grand Stand were so cool!

Riese: The Grandstand performances are always a highlight, I never miss them, Kaylah and Kai and Gigler and Trent put together some amazing shit this year.

Kip: The Grandstand was bumpin. We have such talented campers! It was great to see campers bring their own talents to camp and be brave enough to stand up and share them. I have mad love for that. Also the cheer team, chair dance team (what was their official posse name?), and the celebrity dance grooves team. Ugh. Such good stuff.

Kai: The cheerleading stunts went perfectly and I was the proudest Cheer Mama. Huge props to everyone who was up there, especially for the first time, because I still get nervous about camp performances even though I know everyone is supportive no matter what.

Kristin Russo, The Talent: I fulfilled a second dream by leading a hula-hoop contest, and also got to see Jenny and Mal and all of their songwriting campers perform their original song, DOIN STUFF AT CAMP. Also one of the campers purchased all of the Everyone Is Gay buttons so that we could give them away to everyone for free. I think this is about the time that I started having feelings like, “How will I ever leave this mountain and function in the real world ever again?”

Mey Rude, Hogwarts Counselor: During the first half of the State Fair, I was a part of the team for Geek Trivia, which was super fun. Plus, Hogwarts cabin totally showed up! Almost all of my campers were there and at one point, something like five out of the eight people there were from Hogwarts.

Elicia Sanchez, The Talent: I co-led the geek trivia for the first block and by co-led, I mean I was there and ate some chips and Grace ran everything like a really well-oiled machine. She did not have time for any bullshit. Like NONE. And Mey did not have time to feel sorry for people that didn’t remember all the names of the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park.

Mey: “Pterodactyls are NOT dinosaurs! Are you guys serious!”
Grace: “Some of you didn’t even put T-Rex. NOT EVEN T-REX.”

I love these people.

Mey: Overall, I was really proud of how well everyone did, even if they did boo us when we tricked them with a Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie question, and if none of them could name six dinosaurs featured in the first Jurassic Park movie.

Elicia: Whitney’s Pokemon questions and hat were my favorites and apologies for the really hard Star Trek questions (I get too excited sometimes). And, okay. SORRY for the question about Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie that angered campers enough to the point that I overheard some of you say later at different activities that the Buffy movie question from trivia was “total bullshit!”

Laura M: Geek trivia was really hard, but I think our little team did admirably.

Cee Webster, Fried Green Tomatoes Counselor: Did you guys know we have an actual rocket scientist at camp? Joy gave a really interesting talk about space and the work she does at SpaceX which is a super awesome company. I was impressed how easily she could explain difficult concepts and how accessible her talk was. I think everyone is really excited about the potential for our cats to colonize Mars.

KaeLyn: After the pool, I ran off to be the showrunner/card girl for Carmen and Stef’s Singled Out live show. I was still wearing my bathing suit under my dress and I felt that the moment was right. Never have ankle socks and athletic shoes looks so great with a one-piece. Seriously, though, I’m pretty comfortable with my body, but I’m also not the type that parades around in my bathing suit. Thanks for going along with it. A-Camp makes you brave.

Gigler:  KaeLyn holding up the question board like she’s ready to wave some flags at a race track I mean damnnn!

Stef: KaeLyn was an amazing Vanna White in her gorgeous bikini, and I couldn’t have asked for a better Jenny McCarthy than Carmen Rios.

Gigler: And I have no idea how I ended up involved or how I arrived to be in a child’s high-chair (#toddlerfemme) but that happened at some point it’s all a blur.

Kaylah Wilson, The Beach Counselor: Singled Out was hilarious, in part because most of the campers had never seen the show and had no idea what was going on and sometimes the schtick didn’t quite work out and we rolled with it and Gigler got into a high chair for no reason and Kaylah was the best Shade Queen and it was just great fun. I do hope we got some people laid.

Rachel: Wait, this was based on a show?

Stef: It isn’t easy to revive a game show only a very small segment of the campers had ever actually seen before, and queering it was definitely a learning experience. We had a couple of hiccups along the way, but by the end we’d definitely settled into a groove and figured out how to make the game work.

Gigler: My takeaway was that I still love Kaylah the most, and her shade reigns supreme.

Rory: I saw Kaylah standing up there, royally throwing shade every which way and I just thought uh yes can I be your Shade Prince and build you a Shade Castle, rest you on a Shade Thrown and live shadily ever after watching you rule over the Shade Queendom.

Gabby: Carmen and Stef stole my heart and told me to stfu at Singled Out, mostly cuz I’m a loud/funny bitch and I was stealing their thunder. I’m still not sorry for choosing Britney Spears over Brittani Nichols. I don’t think B lost any sleep over that shit esp cuz she can’t use me to get more famous so it’s all gravy.

Robin: Judge Gigler and Kaylah the Shade Queen gave me LIFE!

Stef:  Some of the staff jumped in to help us create challenges for the potential dates — Kaylah’s Shade Queen was particularly perfect, and I really enjoyed watching Gilles try to convince a bear to drive them up the mountain after their hypothetical bus broke down. Also, two of my Campires matched up and made out, so I felt like my cabin won Singled Out.

Carmen:  AND THEN! Then, I rescued a bunch of people from dying alone at Singled Out. It was such a moment of glory and triumph to finally be up there challenging people to break Kaylah’s shade. Like, it was everything I wanted and more.

Kai: I participated in Singled Out and I WON WUNMI’S HEART BECAUSE WE’RE PERFECT. It was officially the best day of camp/my life. And I know Carmen thinks I cheated but I totally didn’t. Wunmi and I are just meant to be <3. I need Kaylah to just follow me around and throw shade with heart shaped sunglasses.

Laura Wooley, Sea Otters Counselor: KaeLyn looked so cute in her bathing suit at Singled Out that I decided to move my chapstick making workshop outside so that we could all watch the game. We all got a really good wrist workout stirring our oil and beeswax until I discovered that our “double boilers” were really more like double tepid water baths and a camper solved all our problems by getting scalding water from the cafeteria. Whoever it was who told me that you didn’t like coming to my workshops because there’s always so much stirring involved: we’ve worked out the kinks! Come make crafts with us next time!

Gabby: I played with some of the little Alpine Meadows babies in the big bouncy house and it was so cute. I got to swing and play corn hole with my girl and with Trent. You guise, I’m just gonna keep gushing about Laura ’cause love is stupid and real. We met at first camp and I fell in love with her then and this was our first camp together in almost three camps, so it was very nice. She kicked my ass at cornhole and I’m okay with that. She pushed me on the swings. She made popcorn and cotton candy and looked so good hnnggg. But also, everyone is gorgeous at camp. Trent got us to be in her video and she played corn hole with us. And I’m in such deep platonic love with Trent, and so thank God I have a huge heart.

Trent: I spent a good amount of time trying to memorize my lyrics on this morning and also took a good shower because my armpits were stankiiiiin! By the time I finally made it down to the state fair, I had a blast. I know people were like, “WTF is up with this girl taking all this video and pictures? She’s like, obsessed with her phone.” Well.. now you know.

Kai: At some point, Trent came over and made me eat candy for the camera. Now I’m in a music video.

Liz Castle, Tower of Terror Counselor: My absolute FAVORITE part of camp were the vegan burgers at the state fair!!!!! I should have asked for the recipe because I’m not sure if I’ll ever be able to recreate congealed patties of plain rice and kidney beans on my own :( They were soo good three vegans I was eating lunch with had a hotdogs instead… their loss, more for me!

KaeLyn: You all. I have been veg/vegan for almost 15 years and vegan for 10 of those. And I just couldn’t with the rice/bean mush burgers. I ate one. I did. But then, then, when no one was looking, I snuck a hot dog as quickly as I could and scarfed it secretly behind a tree by myself all guilty-like. And then immediately fessed up to Elicia and then to other people and now to all of you. I did not share this with my spouse until, like, three days after I got back. And um… now I started eating meat again, I think? That’s right. I went to A-Camp and came back eating meat. I feel like I did it wrong.

Alex Vega, Alleged Vegan: KAELYN I ATE A HOT DOG TOO SAME THING *runs away in shame*

Stef: Am I the only vegan who stayed vegan for all of camp? I couldn’t deal with the gluten-free pathetic excuses for pancakes they gave us in the morning and fundamentally rejected the fucking rice sandwich they gave us at lunch, so all I ate this whole day was a handful of peanut butter pretzels, a Clif bar and a pile of kale at dinner, followed by about a gallon of bourbon. If you’re wondering why some of the bass parts were sloppy later on in the evening, there’s my explanation.

Riese: State Fair lunch was the best lunch all week because they had hot dogs and potato chips and I got to sit with campers and hear them talk about their days and lives. Also the cooks all bought scissoring sweatshirts and were sporting them looking so cute we felt bad for hating the vegan burgers.

Carolyn W: The cook asked for my thumbs up on his potato salad. I told him I didn’t get any. He said he wasn’t shocked. Because I didn’t know who made the potato salad. And that is a no-no lol.

Laneia: Megan and I ate our lunches with some super chill campers amongst the trees and it was really fucking lovely! For the record, I had a hamburger and it reminded me of my childhood.

Riese: Also! Deanne was an A+ hostess of the festivities! She’s so funny.

Cecelia: I didn’t know if I could pull off three hours of Tarot Readings because it’s really emotionally exhausting work. Thankfully Morgan filled in for me a bit later, bless her.

Morgan McCormick, Sea Otters Counselor: I was really touched that Cecelia tapped me to take over for her at giving Tarot Readings later in the day and that she trusted me with something that to me is a pretty awesome responsibility, both in its import and pleasure.

Cecelia: I came up with a really special three card spread just for camp — something you came here to seek, something you’ve found here, and what you will leave the mountain knowing. I was actually so energized by reading for all of you and having some time to reflect on your A-Camp experience together. I can’t remember who had this reading, but someone drew The Fool and the Ace of Cups and The Sun and that was the first time I really understood what an honor it is to read Tarot for other people. That person was nervous probably that I was yelling, but I was bestowed with the privilege of yelling to that person: “Your life will soon be very beautiful in every way, the world is good for you and you are good for this world la la la!”

Morgan: It could get pretty intense in there because I’ve been doing readings for a few years and I am not a sugar coater. Nor am I a cynic, I just try to be as real with people as the cards are being with us in that moment. One surreal reading was where a deck that had been shuffled so numerously turned out, in ascending numerical order, a five of cups, a six of cups and a seven of cups. The querent understandably asked me if I was doing a card trick and I was like “noooooo the cards do what they want.”

Dannielle Owens-Reid, The Talent: Julia and I met two campers that we ended up talking to literally all day and all night. It was so interesting to see the perspective of campers who loved the environment and loved everything camp was about, but were having a hard time because their cabin kept spending each night all making out with each other! We also got into a long conversation about feminism, bi-erasure, porn, living your best life, and how we can change the world. It was so fucking inspiring and interesting.

Gigler: I got to run the boxing ring for a while which I was really amped about, got some hardcore ink from Rory (his line work is tight btw), did really terribly and then really well at the (soy/almond/hemp) milk bottle ring toss, took a damn hayride w/our campdad, and got to laugh and dance and hang out with so many outstanding people.

Yvonne: I waited in line in what seemed forever to get my face painted by none other than Rory! I asked for a unicorn and Rory painted the cutest fucking unicorn on my cheek. I really appreciated it was chunky, like me.

Carolyn Wysinger, Firebirds Counselor: I ran the arm wrestling tournament where BONECRUSHER, aka Tiya became the star of camp. She took down EVERYONE in a matter of seconds. It was amazing to watch. I do believe she is the reason the red team won Rainbow Wars.

Riese: BONECRUSHER! She is the reason red team won Rainbow Wars. Hands down. HANDS DOWN! Get it?

Elicia: Then equally amazing camper Nico asked for a turn and sat down and just nonchalantly owned the Bonecrusher.

Morgan: Tiya and Vivian destroyed me at arm wrestling and I loved every second of it. I legit thought I might be the strongest person at camp and I am so over that high fantasy narrative and happy to be so.

Bren: There’s only one thing people need to know about the State Fair… there was a bounce house! I have never, in my 37 years on this planet, been inside a bounce house. In the fading light of the afternoon, as everything was winding down, I got five minutes alone in the bounce house and it was all I ever dreamed it could be.

Riese: See when people are upset about A-Camp tuition going up, it’s only ’cause they don’t know yet that there’s gonna be a bounce house. Then they see the bounce house and they’re like: OH.

Heather: Dang, I loved doing Bitches Brew. I was really nervous about talking in front of everyone, and it was pretty academic, so I was afraid it would be boring. But no! Everyone was so psyched to talk about the feminist history of beer brewing and drinking, and even more psyched to try out different female-created recipes of beer!

Laura W: I stepped into Heather’s Bitches Brew for five minutes to, well, get a drink. But it was the five most fascinating minutes of the day! Did you know that our idea of witches is based on beer and holy femininity and stuff? I really hope she writes an article about it.

Liz Castle: It was super fun!! Delicious beer and feminist history… always a winning combo. Only problem was putting it in the same block as the Whiskey tasting. This resulted in me leaving my phone with Jenny at the merch table which seemed to be fine until I discovered the first of a series of pictures I had never seen before mysteriously posted to my instagram. Luckily everyone at camp is so f*cking adorable, so I can’t really complain.

Laneia: Missed Bitches Brew, am still mad about it.

Whitney: I loved the Whiskey Tasting last year, and I loved it again this year. This time Ali and Alex walked us through the four different types of whiskey from Coppercraft Distillery, and I got to try all of them and learn about the differences between a corn whiskey and a rye whiskey. So, so good. I bought one of the Autostraddle flasks and I’m planning to buy a snifter, so I can have more good whiskey in my life. Because my alcohol tolerance almost doesn’t exist, I was tipsy and very happy for the rest of the afternoon and more excited than I thought I could have ever been for the State Fair outdoor barbecue.

Ali: During th’ afternoon at th’ Fair, I did back-to-back tastings — one with our wonderfullllll beer sponsor, Dale Brothers, and one with our amaziiiinnnggg whiskey sponsor, Coppercraft Distillery. I dunno why they scheduled me that way, on account of like I told you already I have almost no tolerance on the mountain, so I was three sheets to the wind by *hiccup* by *hiccup* by…I forget the time. WHAT DO YOU DO WITH A DRUNKEN SAILOR, WHAT DO YOU DO WITH A DRUNKEN SAILOR, WHAT DO YOU DO WITH A DRUNKEN SAILOR, EARL-AYE IN THE MORNING? I need to sit down.

Maddie: In the afternoon, I went to The Owl Story Slam, emceed by the one and only Gabby, who kicked it off with a beautiful and gripping story about how she faced a fear and learned it was worth it. Then campers came up to tell their “first time” stories, and Audrey made me cry so fucking hard before she even started to read when she dedicated her absolutely phenomenal story about her dad and tying ties to me and Riese. So I just sat there pretzeled up into myself on one of those chairs in Eagle that destroyed my back, quietly sobbing while she spoke.

Riese: I AM SO SAD TO HAVE MISSED THIS!

Carly: I performed three back-to-back-to-back magic shows during the state fair. I was extremely nervous because I didn’t set aside enough time to practice. I think overall they went well. Robin graciously offered to help me out by getting everyone seated, introducing me, and turning on the smoke machine. For two of the three shows I was hiding inside a cardboard box, and after Robin introduced me I kicked my way out of it and shouted “did somebody say MAGIC?” which Robin had not said. I wanted to come out to “The Final Countdown” but forgot to set that up beforehand. Oh well. Next year for sure.

Riese: The String Cheese & Boxed Wine Tasting was the best idea I’ve had since I had the idea for camp. I prepared for this workshop intensely and even with all that prep, there was so much last-minute work to be done!

Riese: Demand for the workshop was very high, but luckily, my campers are like angels with edgy/traditional haircuts and Analyssa, Courtney and Hana volunteered to be my cocktail waitresses. I felt like everybody had an opportunity to be their best self for about 1.5 hours. Everybody who came was DOWN TO PARTY. We were laughing, we were stringing cheese, we were drinking out of dixie cups on tore-up craft tables. It brought me back to wine and cheese training at The Olive Garden.

Laneia: I have never felt so at home and so sure that I was fulfilling my life’s actual purpose than during String Cheese & Boxed Wine Tasting. The campers sampled different brands of string cheese and then scored them based on a very scientific thing we made up. You can see the results of this endeavor here. Riese brought a variety of boxed wines and we might have scored them as well, I honestly don’t remember.

Riese: Also Laneia and I made up stories about the origins of the cheese and the wine, just to sound fancy. I love making shit up. I was so worried about not having enough string cheese and boxed wine that I bought too much string cheese and boxed wine. It was a Runaway hit!

Gabby: I kind of just wish Robin and Marni could be in charge of shit like this at the national level so everything outside of camp didn’t suck so bad. They really pulled the team together and made this awesome thing pulse with life. I had fun. Like so much fun.

Carly: Big giant props to Robin and Marni for once again planning and executing a massive all-day event at camp. I don’t know why you torture yourselves with this but it always comes together beautifully. (jk it’s Riese’s fault)

Riese: I’m so much fun to be friends with!

Mey: I also sat with Elicia at dinner and she has the absolutely best stories I’ve ever heard in my entire life. She talked about a really, really powerful love spell she put on a boy in middle school and her childhood friend who was involved in a Set it Off-inspired bank robbery. If you think she’s funny when she’s doing standup, you need to have a conversation with her.

Elicia: I had a fun dinner conversation with Mey about witchcraft in which I overshared and DeAnne, who also sat down and became part of the oversharing circle I started.

Kai: I learned how to play Spoons this day. Wunmi told me she once had no spoons for Spoons and had to play with knives. I was impressed.

A-Camp 6.0 Recamps Part Three: Queers, Queers, We’re Everywhere!

feature image by Norah Smith

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Once upon a time (May 30th-June 4th, to be specific) in a land far far atop a mountain two hours outside of sunny Los Angeles, approximately 300 queer humans — 250 campers, 50+ staff and talent — gathered for four days and four nights of revelry, intellectual stimulation, dance parties and deep sea bonding. They called it A-Camp 6.0, and it was beautiful! This is the third of three fantastic recaps which serve to ease our collective separation anxiety, give you a behind-the-scenes look at how your A-Camp soysage is made, enable us to wax nostalgic over times gone by and provide prospective campers with a brilliant glimpse into the A-Camp Experience from the Staff Side Of Things. (If you wanna know how it feels to be a camper, you’ll have to come to camp!)

A-Camp was the genesis of an idea Riese had at 3AM in July 2010: the concept was to take the spirit of the website into three glorious dimensions by renting a summer camp in the off-season and jam-packing a long weekend with panels, workshops, discussions, crafts, sports, entertainment, parties and so much more! We gave the idea a spin with an abbreviated, smaller edition of A-Camp in April 2012, followed by full-size full-length camps in September 2012, May 2013, October 2013, May 2014 and May 2015.

This camp was our best camp yet. Seriously, we were very on top of our game. This required raising prices, but we think the extra expense was well worth it — I mean, we had a bouncy castle! We had an all-star cast of special talent: actress and DIY Queen Jasika Nicole, Everyone is Gay super-idols Kristin Russo and Dannielle Owens-Reid, musicians Julia Nunes, Jenny Owen Youngs and Mal Bum and comedians Brittani Nichols, Deanne Smith and Elicia Sanchez. Plus, Orange is the New Black’s Lauren Morelli showed up for an hilarious afternoon Q&A, Kimber Hall joined Brittani for improv and former Miss Kentucky Djuan Trent sang from her soul. A DELIGHTFUL TIME WAS HAD BY ALL.

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A-Camp 6.0, Day Four: Tuesday, June 2nd

Morning Activities

Block A: Been Gay (Riese, Laneia, Bren, Carolyn W, Gabby, Heather, KaeLyn) // Write Your Face Off #3 (Rachel, Yvonne) // Solidarity from the Mountain: Making Cards For Incarcerated Queer and Trans People (Maddie) // Stylish-of-Center (Cee, Carly, Dannielle, Brittani) // Chair Dancing With Cupcake (Kaylah, Gigler)

Block B: Destigmatize Your Size: A Discussion of Fat Positivity and Body Acceptance (Elicia, Mey) // Dapper Collar Pins (Hansen) // Safer Sex: Follow Up Q&A (Lizz R & Carolyn Y) // Queer Camp Cheer Camp (Kai) // Senior Editors Hike (Riese, Laneia, Rachel, Yvonne & Heather) // Learn to Magish (Carly)

Riese Bernard, A-Camp Founder and Runaways Counselor: This is the day where you start panicking that camp is almost over and you simultaneously are craving / requiring way more sleep and food AND craving / requiring more time with your Runaways and all the campers forever and ever and ever! We just had such a great group this time and I wanted to hear all their stories.

Ali Osworth, Star Runners Counselor: Oh! I think this was the morning I dressed up in my unicorn onesie and took anti-nausea meds and gatorade to the Star Runners, who’d been passing around a stomach thing. I am your anti-nausea unicorn, my fine friends.

Sarah Hansen, Fun Home Counselor: The day before Dapper Collar Pins, someone pointed out to me that what I thought was a collar pin was not a collar pin. So, I panicked and made new collar pins in the morning before the craft.

Chelsey Petty, Blackhearts Counselor: Hansen was so stressed about Dapper Collar pins, so I was there to be her heart half during the workshop, which really meant I wandered around oogling everyone’s pins.

Hansen: Everything turned out great. I like low-key crafting sessions where we can just listen to music and talk to people and not take ourselves too seriously, so having a craft where people could do their own thing and amaze me with their talents was exactly what I tried to facilitate.

Chelsey: When all was said and done that craft ROCKED and everyone made such cool versions of whatever a Dapper Collar Pin meant to them. Also Hansen got to tell everyone that we were running out of space because of scissor limits, so I think she peaked this camp.

Hansen: Chelsey helped me so much during this craft by listening to me worry about it and then help me set it up, and I am endlessly grateful for how perfect she is.

Mey Rude, Hogwarts Counselor: Since I signed up to lead or be a part of so many panels and workshops, I only had time to go to one other person’s activity, and I chose Maddie’s Making Cards for Incarcerated Queer and Trans People, which ended up being the perfect choice.

Maddie Taterka, Firebirds Counselor: Thank you ten million times to everyone who came to make cards for incarcerated queer and trans people. I was really excited to do it and to work with Black and Pink, and it was really amazing to see how many people showed up to make beautiful cards. Everyone was so thoughtful and caring in their letters, telling people about A-Camp, sending jokes and comics — Rory even made an origami guide!

Rory Midhani, Rodeo Disco Counselor: I went into it like yeah, cool, gonna do some cute drawings and write a lil thing and then walk away. But once I was in it, reading through the lists of prisoners and reading their names and reading their profiles — their interests their likes and their dislikes and stuff, their personalities… I found that in itself very powerful and moving. I choose to write to a woman who liked origami and included folding instructions for making an origami puppy dog!

Maddie: It’s worth noting that when you make cards for people in prison, you can really only use plain paper and markers because of ridiculous regulations and restrictions, but no one was deterred from being super creative.

Mey: It was really, really moving and incredible and I’m really thankful for Maddie that she lead this workshop and thankful for all the campers who made amazing cards for these people.

Maddie: I think it’s so important that we share the huge mass of energy and love from A-Camp with incarcerated people who can’t be there, especially since we know how queer and trans people, especially queer and trans people of color and in particular black queer and trans people, are targeted and profiled by police and the prison system. I hope that if writing letters felt moving to you, you’ll find ways to bring that solidarity off the mountain and into your own lives. Jason Lydon, the director of Black and Pink, talked with us about ways to do that.

Gabby Rivera, Beehive Counselor: I was happy to be on the Been Gay panel and talk about my cracking knees, elderly parents, and struggle to stay hip. I kid! No, it was great.

Bren Christolear, Fried Green Tomatoes Counselor: There was crying. And it was mostly by me. And that is all I can really say without crying again, except thank goodness for Autostraddle and Riese and A-Camp and the campers and the mountain.

KaeLyn Rich, Shark Week Counselor: There were lots of boxes of tissues there when we arrived and we were like, We don’t need these tissues. But then we did. We needed the tissues. For me, getting involved in Autostraddle community, like actually commenting on articles and engaging with the site, has helped me connect more with like-minded queer people in their 30’s than I have ever found in my real everyday life. I hope more people who are looking for that older queer connection will find a home at Autostraddle.

Laneia, Executive Editor and Runaways Counselor: Love hanging out with the older crowd and hearing people’s varied experiences with coming out later (or being out since forever but like, now they’re 30 and things are different), building new communities, intentionally queer parenting, and other lovely things that made (some) people cry.

Heather, Senior Editor and Hogwarts Counselor: I especially loved hanging out with our 30+ campers because the conversation wasn’t like, Oh, kids these days! or whatever. Because it was the mountain! And the mountain was magic! We talked about what’s great about being an queer adult and what’s challenging about being a queer adult, especially when it comes to making friends and creating queer-friendly spaces for our friends with kids. Also, I publicly apologized for bailing on one of Gabby and Laura’s parties in NYC when I first moved there/started working for Autostraddle and confessed it was because I didn’t feel cool enough, and Gabby confessed that she thought I thought I was too cool. It was healing!

Carolyn Wysinger, Firebirds Counselor: I don’t know if we actually addressed the questions on our list. But we talked about so many great important things.

KaeLyn: We only got through a few of the topics because the conversation was great. I loved that folks who came were openly talking with each other and making suggestions to one another.

Riese: I liked that it was a small group, it felt more like a bunch of seniors sitting around shooting the breeze than like a formal panel. I wish we had lawn chairs though.

Carolyn W: I was glad to stand up as the example of what it means to be 36 and living your best 16-year-old second adolescence, but also how hard it is being engaged in community work and the respectability politics involved with things like family.

Gabby: I learned a lot about how everyone else is navigating adulthood. queer spaces need to be more explicitly kid-friendly, sometimes at least! and it seems like there’s a lot of fun shit happening in Ohio, so let’s all move!

Riese: Yeah the big takeaway was: move to Ohio.

Carolyn: I was happy to be around the old timers for once on the mountain. But really I’m gonna do like Kaelyn and start worrying more about remodeling my firepit.

KaeLyn: I think some people with kids were surprised to find that there were other people with kids at camp. We talked about dating as older queers, finding community when you are no longer part of the bar scene, second adolescence after coming out later in life, and lots more. It was so affirming.

Elicia Sanchez, Ghost Power Counselor: Last year some very sweet campers came up to me to thank me for my fat positive comments during my comedy set onstage, and I was like,  “We SHOULD have a fat positivity workshop here, shouldn’t we?” I said and they responded,”‘and YOU should run it!” Keeping that in mind, I was excited to submit the Destigmatize Your Size workshop this year, but was only vaguely sure what the structure would be and how to make sure it was both fun and informative. While I myself am all about body positivity and fat acceptance, I also have zero degrees or professional work experience leading sensitive discussions so I was concerned if I could pull it off with only my personal experience and opinions as a guide. Thankfully, Mey agreed to co-lead with me and with her much more focused and responsible guidance, the format of the discussion became much more clear.

Mey: Elicia is one of my top favorite people on the mountain. She’s one of the funniest people I’ve ever met and she’s super fun and real and terrific. Also, I don’t have a lot of fat friends in my real life, so having her at camp to talk to was really great.

Elicia: Before camp and the day of the workshop I was a bit concerned no one would show. After all, just because I felt like I would want to attend such a workshop at camp didn’t mean the campers all felt that way. As the room filled up with SO many campers of all sizes, I was amazed. Not only because I found out this was an activity people wanted, but it was great to have a sense of size solidarity with so many campers! I know for me, sometimes in big social situations, it can be really welcoming to meet other fat people. Being able to talk about our insecurities and fears and most importantly, just VENT about all the BULLSHIT we have to put up in our everyday lives, whether we are actually uncomfortable with our size or not IS JUST SO FUCKING FREEING.

KaeLyn: I am just in love with Elicia and Mey. And with body positivity and body-love spaces. So, uh, I had no choice but to go to Destigmatize Your Size. It was so cool seeing people of all shapes and sizes and genders together in a packed room, frankly discussing our complicated relationships with our bods.

Mey: We were super happy when the room was totally full, and then even more happy with how great this activity ended up being. We were able to laugh about things, talk about things we can’t normally talk about, we were able to be vulnerable and we were able to just be ourselves.

Elicia: All attendees of every size were the greatest people who brought so much to the discussion either from personal stories, anecdotes, their own opinions or just sharing really great advice. This has BY FAR been my favorite discussion-related activity of both of the camps I’ve been to. The vibe was genuine and positive and there was such an important sense of belonging I felt in that room. For the rest of camp I received some really beautiful notes from campers thanking Mey and I for running this workshop. One mentioned that being in attendance made them feel like it was the first time they were really SEEN at camp which still makes me cry because I FELT THE EXACT SAME!

KaeLyn: It’s a conversation we need to have in queer spaces more often, as our communities experience so much stigmatization and cultural pressure from all sides. One of biggest takeaways from camp is Cleo’s recommendation of Monistat anti-chaff powder gel for underboob sweat. #gamechanger

Elicia: I’m so so glad Robin and Marni let me organize this workshop and I can’t wait to do it again next year! Although, I promise next time, I will make sure we have snacks! Mey is rad and also thought to bring in comfortable chairs!

Mey: I was very grateful to Megan brought us some chairs from Eagle because the ones that they had in Wolf weren’t very fat person friendly.

Rachel: Yvonne and I worked together for the third and final installment of my Write Your Face Off workshop, and I remained shocked and overwhelmed that so many people not only wanted to show up at all, but showed up multiple times in a row! We did a few different things for our last workshop together; we did a little list illustration exercise with Yvonne, and then I made everyone get down on the floor for a writing arts and crafts project that involved making a visual map of personal narratives on the ground that could be moved around and manipulated to make different versions of the piece, because for some reason I was really determined to make writing a 3D activity that involved sitting on the carpet. It was so beautiful, and made me feel so much joy to see everyone focused on their own words and stories and building them together! I couldn’t be more happy with how this workshop went.

Yvonne, Senior Editor and Shark Week Counselor: I was so jealous of all the campers who went to all parts of Rachel’s writing workshop because I would’ve loved to participate and complete all her homework assignments. I got to help out the last part of the workshop and it was great to be in such a chill space.

Kai Keller, The Beach Counselor:  A-Camp Cheer Camp is what I live for. I’m lucky enough to be involved with the gayest cheer team of all time, but as a whole, we’re seriously lacking on the out-and-proud queer representation front. That’s why I love this workshop, where we can build an entire team made of queermos. This year I was lucky to have some incredibly talented past cheerleaders, dancers, and enthusiasts. Many of them showed up a few minutes late which led to me sitting with Camper Caitlin reassuring myself that CHEERLEADING IS AWESOME AND IS TOTALLY A SPORT AND PEOPLE WILL LIKE THIS. Hana was our only flyer and was a total trooper while I continuously yelled things like “Squeeze your ass!” and “Stand up!” because cheerleading. Everyone was great.

Kai: I’ll just drop this bit of our cheer right here, icymi.

Queers, Queers, We’re Everywhere!
We all look so damn good, I swear!
We look to the left.
We look to the right.
I wanna see you at Klub Deer tonight!

Watch us close while we go up.
A-Camp Cheerleaders are wassup!

Carmen Rios, Rodeo Disco Counselor: I was super excited to go to Chair Dancing With Cupcake, the workshop which will probably singlehandedly alter the future of my relationship. I was a little late, though, because my pesky bug bite wasn’t getting smaller and I had a private consulation with Dr. Lizz about it in her room before the workshop started. And by that I mean, I was late because someone from Alpine Meadows walked in on me with my jeans down to my ankles and Lizz on her knees looking super closely at my thigh. Lizz and I really bonded on this day, I think.

Lizz Rubin, Witchblades Counselor: First thing in the AM Carmen asked me to look at her bug bite on her upper thigh. An Alpine Meadows staffer walked in and definitely thought some funny business was going on!

Emily Gigler: Gotdamn. Kaylah whipped up a smokin routine for us in Chair Dancing With Cupcake, and everyone who showed up fucking Brought It. I mean yinz rose and shone your asses straight out of breakfast to do a damn Chair. Dance. at 10am. And you made it sexy as hell!

Cecelia White, Witchblades Counselor: I will never spend a single moment thinking about the potential inadequacy of my butt after chair dancing, it made me feel that good and sexy and empowered. My butt can do sexy things in proximity to chairs! Who’s the gayby now?! I must thank Kaylah for her phenomenal choreography and Kai and Gigler who are wonderful and fine instructors.

Lizz: Thank you to Cupcake for teaching me to chair dance. It was so important. Chrissie also thanks you.

Emily: My favorite part was when the room split in half, each side turning to face the other, and campers “demonstrated” for each other like they were already in love. Also Carmen came up with her final move of kicking the chair over at the end. There was magic everywhere.

Lizz: We decided to do the Safer Sex Q&A follow up as a Q&A and Toys Bonanza outside! It was so beautiful out that I think a bunch of people came just for the weather and got a lot more than they expected! I’m endlessly fascinated by the incredible, detailed and thoughtful safer sex questions that you guys ask! You guys are amazing.

Stef Schwartz, Campires Counselor: I spent this entire day practicing music with Mal Blum, talking about life with Mal Blum, reveling in the benevolent presence of Mal Blum. Mal and I live like eight blocks away from each other in Brooklyn, but had to come to the mountains of California to actually hang out. During second block, we had a huge band rehearsal with all the vocalists we had on hand, and I quietly and privately fell deeply in love with each and every one of them.

Djuan Trent, Beehive Counselor: I did my usual…meditation and chillin’ and learning lyrics after breakfast. Met up with the family band folks a little later in the morning…rehearsal was great. I was really loving these folks.

Trent: Stef is freaking awesome and her skills on the bass are boss level. Marni is so great and accommodating, like… she just really cares and I appreciate that. Marni has also got some soul… I totally dig it. I’m pretty sure the “Grandma’s Hands”/”No Diggity” mashup is my favorite thing. Alex knows how to play the drums, the tambourine and a whiskey bottle all at once, like… who else is on this level??? NO ONE. Mal Blum is great and we introduce ourselves to each other every time we see one another- don’t ask questions, just let us be great. Julia is fun and I’m sad for her leg but even moreso impressed that she manages to maintain her rockstar status by turning her limp into a gangsta lean- or perhaps this is what I have imagined for her in my mind, whatever. Jenny’s energy is explosive every time…it’s like she’s being chill but the energy is building up inside of her and then all of a sudden, this super strong voice comes out and all of these arm movements happen and she’s hopping around and you feel like you are also supposed to be hopping around, so you hop- Thanks, Jenny.

Liz Castle, Tower of Terror Counselor: I was super stoked about the Leather Wrist Cuffs we made in this year… however I was not expecting approximately every person at camp to show up! It made it super fun but super busy so everyone who came got an awesome upcycled leather cuff and a free lesson in patience.

Laneia: I walked by Falcon and people were spilling out the front door and into the trees. So many people wanted cuffs!

Lizz R.: Rachel and I tried so hard to make leather cuffs but Liz was the most popular person ever! We ended up tying ours together with string, like our undying friendship.

Rachel: I still haven’t finished my cuff and yet it is somehow still my favorite piece of jewelry I own.

Dannielle Owens-Reid, The Talent: I’m still so mad I couldn’t learn to magish with whats-her-face.

Carly Usdin, Special Programming Director: Learn to Magish was something Robin and I came up with a few months ago. I had been taking classes at the Magic Castle here in LA and we decided that not only should I perform at camp (more on that later), but I should also teach a class! This was endlessly exciting for me. I love teaching people how to do things, and I love magic! We had an awesome class full of campers who were super excited to learn a few tricks. I even learned a thing or two from them. I had a blast and I think everyone else did too — my students kept telling me throughout the rest of camp how they’d been trying out their magic skills on their cabinmates and wowing everyone all over the mountain. I was so proud!

Riese: Obviously, Laneia, Rachel, Yvonne and I were taking way too long to get ready for the Senior Editors Hike, so Senior Staff Butch Queen Heather Hogan brought the entire hiking group… to us. Like literally to the doorstep of our cabin as Laneia and I were still altering our outfits. It wasn’t a genuine hike, but it served the purpose we desired which was to have time to walk and talk with campers. Walking and talking with campers: one of life’s greatest pleasures.

Laneia: It’s so hard to talk and walk at the same time on that mountain! How does anyone do it? I genuinely don’t understand. I was wheezing and nodding and trying to get out a full sentence before I had to faint. I mean on the whole it was fantastic. I learned so much about rocks from camper Vivian and now all I want to do is be a geologist. Or like, a geologist/midwife crossover maybe.

Rachel: Despite going to every single camp we’ve ever had, somehow the Senior Editors Hike is the only hike I’ve ever gone on. It was wonderful! Thank you so much to all the campers who came and who were very kind and patient about our obviously amateurish hiking capabilities, and who showed us that one weird tree that smelled like vanilla chai for some reason if you got close enough to it. Ironically I usually find that camp doesn’t leave me a lot of time to actually talk to many campers, so it was fantastic to have a block where I could just chat and get to know people!

Yvonne: I was so surprised to see how many people came out for the Senior Editor Hike! I felt so loved and important and excited to chat with campers. It was also great to stretch my legs and venture beyond the main lodges.

Heather: Well, I am terrified of bears, so there’s no way I was going hiking alone at camp. The Senior Editors Hike was the perfect way to spend time with these gorgeous Straddlers and see the nature and not get eaten alive by a giant, bloodthirsty beast. I think I learned what a waterwheel was on this hike, but now I can’t remember. The air’s so thin up there!

A-Camp 6.0 Recamps Part Two: I’m A Jenny In A Bear Suit, Baby

Once upon a time (May 30th-June 4th, to be specific) in a land far far atop a mountain two hours outside of sunny Los Angeles, approximately 300 queer humans — 250 campers and 50+ staff and talent — gathered for four days and four nights of revelry, intellectual stimulation, dance parties and deep sea bonding. They called it A-Camp 6.0, and it was beautiful! This is the second of four fantastic recaps which serve to ease our collective separation anxiety, give you a behind-the-scenes look at how your A-Camp soysage is made, enable us to wax nostalgic over times gone by and provide prospective campers with a brilliant glimpse into the A-Camp Experience from the Staff Side Of Things. (If you wanna know how it feels to be a camper, you’ll have to come to camp!)

A-Camp was the genesis of an idea Riese had at 3AM in July 2010: the concept was to take the spirit of the website into three glorious dimensions by renting a summer camp in the off-season and jam-packing a long weekend with panels, workshops, discussions, crafts, sports, entertainment, parties and so much more! We gave the idea a spin with an abbreviated, smaller edition of A-Camp in April 2012, followed by full-size full-length camps in September 2012, May 2013, October 2013, May 2014 and May 2015.

This camp was our best camp yet. Seriously, we were very on top of our game. This required raising prices, but we think the extra expense was well worth it — I mean, we had a bouncy castle! We had an all-star cast of special talent: actress and DIY Queen Jasika Nicole, Everyone is Gay super-idols Kristin Russo and Dannielle Owens-Reid, musicians Julia Nunes, Jenny Owen Youngs and Mal Bum and comedians Brittani Nichols, Deanne Smith and Elicia Sanchez. Plus, Orange is the New Black’s Lauren Morelli showed up for an hilarious afternoon Q&A, Kimber Hall improvisationally enterained us with Brittani and former Miss Kentucky Djuan Trent sang from her soul. A DELIGHTFUL TIME WAS HAD BY ALL.

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A-Camp 6.0, Two: May 31st, 2015

Morning Activities

Block A: Finger Knittin’ Good (Jasika Nicole) // Writer Writer Pants on Fire (Ali & Hansen) // Bisexual Mountaintop Summit and Feelings Atrium (Rachel, Cecelia, Stef, Elicia, KaeLyn & Liz Castle) // Introvert Meetup (Heather & Whitney) // We’ve Got Your Back: Acts of Community Care (Gabby, Laura, Alex & Mary) // Music Hike (Jenny Owen-Youngs & Mal Blum)

Block B: Say It With Your Chest: Movement Workshop (Brittani Nichols) // Macrame Plant Hangers (Cee & Laneia) // Pool Games (Robin, Mary & Cleo) // Write Your Face Off #1 (Rachel & Heather) // Queer Herstory Trivia (Carmen, Maddie, Carolyn W & Kaelyn) // Intro to Everyone is Gay (Kristin Russo & Dannielle Owens-Reid)

Dannielle Owens-Reid, The Talent: I woke up hella early and sat on a log journaling for the first time in months. Which is ridiculous, but I guess you kind of forget to journal when you’re super happy? IDK. IT was peaceful as fuck and I want to go back to that morning every single day.

Djuan Trent, Contributor & Beehive Counselor: After helping Megan set up some things, I went and found a tree stump to sit on and I did some meditating. It was nice. The air on the mountain was crisp and the sun was so warm on my skin.

Laura Wooley, Former Associate Editor & Sea Otters Counselor: It is my personal belief that swings are one of the finer things in life. The only thing better than swinging is swinging at 7,000 ft above sea level among 300 gorgeous queers.

Lizz Rubin, Former Style Editor & Witchblades Counselor: Jasika taught me and my adorable girlfriend Chrissie how to finger knit in Finger Knittin’ Good and I made this incredible scarf! Guys I made this scarf with my freaking hands! My hands I tell you!

Liz Castle, Tower of Terror Counselor: UGH IM SO SAD I MISSED FINGER KNITTING WITH JASIKA!!! I feel like I got to enjoy plenty of finger knitting jokes later which was good too, but I still want to steal her away and have her teach me her incredible crafty ways!

Kristin Russo, The Talent: OMG WE MET JASIKA AND CLAIRE TODAY! *heart eyes emoji*

Maddie Taterka, Staff Writer and Firebirds Counselor: Y’all BROUGHT IT for Queer Herstory Trivia. You also were very patient which was nice of you.

KaeLyn Rich, Staff Writer and Shark Week Counselor: I wrote such long and ridiculous questions. But don’t you know so many new facts now about Angela Davis and ACT UP? Don’t you?! I had so much fun and Maddie looked so adorable in her rainbow cape.

Maddie: If anyone wants to know even more about Angela Davis, you can read Carmen’s Idol Worship about her.

Riese Bernard, CEO/Editor-in-Chief and Runaways Counselor: Red Team CRUSHED IT at Queer History Trivia. We were off to a great start in the Rainbow Wars.

Cee Webster, Tech Editor & Fried Green Tomatoes Counselor: The macrame plant hangers workshop went really well! Everyone finished their plant hangers and dip dyed them and hung them in the tree outside, as you do. I’m excited folks can now hang their house plants free from their cat’s teeth.

Lizz: After I made a scarf with my hands I made a macrame plant holder. It was super fun to make but Chrissie kept saying I would never use it for a plant. She actually turned out to be right: I’m using it for stuffed animals.

Stef Schwartz, Music Editor & Campires Counselor: I brought hummus! I brought snacks to The Bisexual Mountaintop Summit & Hummus Appreciation Society and nobody else did. For a while I stood next to my sad little tub of hummus and told bisexuals that they could have some if they wanted, but I guess it’s really hard for bisexuals to commit to a decision so very few of them chose to indulge.

Cecelia White, Intern and Witchblades Counselor: I enjoyed some of Stef’s generous hummus faire, because I appreciated its role as the only dip present. There was no time to even think about dips, really, because the discussion was so enriching!

Elicia Sanchez, Comedian and Ghost Power Counselor: Attending and co-leading the Bisexual Meetup was a really great experience for me. I never realized how many campers identified as bixexual and seeing that helped to make me feel much more like I belonged.

Kai Keller, Calendar Girl and The Beach Counselor: It might have given me the most feelings I’ve had at camp ever. The discussion circle I was in was open and fluid and had me confronting all sorts of internalized backwards bullshit I’d been holding onto for a long time.

Rachel Kincaid, Managing Editor and Ghost Power Counselor: We try to do the bisexual discussion group differently each year, and while there’s always room for improvement, I was really happy with how things went! We wrote discussion questions on the wall, gave people time to write thoughts or responses below, and then broke into groups to discuss. We probably could have gone on talking for much longer than the time we had — for days! — but it was cool to be able to dig into some more specific and complicated stuff, whereas in past years I’ve felt like we only had time to discuss some very broad strokes of our shared experiences.

Elicia: Every year I have moments at camp where I find out something I thought I worried or suffered through on my own is actually a commonly shared experience. This was one of those moments, learning that other campers struggled with invisibility or feeling alienated by our respective queer communities at times.

Kai: I sat quietly for a while and just listened and felt surrounded by such brave, smart souls. Then I said words that were scary for me to say and was verbally and physically hugged, loved on.

Stef: I sat down with a brilliant group of campers and we talked about how we self-identify, and whether it’s important to label ourselves “bisexual” or with any terms at all. I’m constantly inspired by just how fucking intelligent and insightful our campers are. I could have stayed there all day.

Cecelia: We doodled our bisexual dreams and discontents on a big white piece of poster board, and I gained so much just reading everyone’s thoughts. I also learned the importance of building strong bisexual communities wherever I go, which has been a really important personal goal to carry with me from the mountain.

Emily Gigler, A-Camp Dancing Queen: A-Camp 6.0’s bisexual gathering was my favorite one so far; so many queers all hanging out in such a chill setting made for some very real, poignant, and hilarious conversations. I felt relaxed and at ease and safe and seen and it was wonderful.

Cecelia: I realized in that exact moment surrounded by so many (so many!) beautiful bisexuals that I had never really expressed my complicated feelings about my own bisexuality and I do in fact feel essentialized, thank you.

Kai: Someone mentioned how diverse in presentation we all were, and it was so true! Bisexuality and queerness come in so many forms, and duh I know this, but to see so many of those gorgeous people sitting in a circle in front of me.

KaeLyn: It was amazing to see a packed room of bi/pan/omni/queer folks.

Elicia: We also talked about hummus for a bit which became important because I learned about specific flavors of hummus I didn’t realize existed before, the titles of which I can no longer remember which is unfortunate and probably the lost key to my current daily survival.

KaeLyn: We solved all the problems and now no one will ever be gender essentialist or biphobic again. Hooray! We did it! Seriously, though, we are really the quiet majority, statistically and realistically. It was beautiful to talk with ya’ll about our experiences and to pool our strength.

Sarah Hansen, Former DIY Editor and Fun Home Counselor: Writer Writer Pants on Fire was a huge success, mainly due to everyone’s horrified faces when we told them to pass their journals to the person next to them. But everyone rolled with it and some incredible stuff came out of it. Gavin ate a ton of disgusting Bertie Bott’s Beans and another camper’s work made me tear up a little as they read it aloud. At camp, I’m just totally amazed by everyone’s talent all the time.

Ali Osworth, Tech Editor and Star Runners Counselor: The Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans exercise — it def yielded really strong work. To anyone who ate the rotten egg flavor, just know that once my school had me do a shot of MSG and write about it. They did not tell me that it was MSG before I swallowed it.

Laura Wooley, Former Associate Editor and Sea Otters Counselor: The Community Care Workshop was such a good way for me to officially start camp.

Gabby Rivera, QPOC Speakeasy Founder and Beyhive Counselor: It meant so much to me. Acts of care got me through a very difficult year and I wanted to share them with everyone on the Mountain.

Laura W: As much as I love it, I sometimes feel isolated up there, so it was really nice for me to start with something about radical love.

Gabby: Laura and I put a lot of work into developing the workshop and putting together the ‘zine. Mary and Alex were the most supportive and thoughtful co-facilitators.

Djuan Trent: I didn’t have anything to do on this morning, so I just kind of wandered around and watched other people do things. Gabby’s workshop seemed to be a hit and when she was explaining it to me the night before it seemed like something I could totally relate to, so I went.

Laura W: I felt like we all got off on our very best foot: Gabby made people feel welcome, I helped people make something, campers talked about the hard parts of community care, and Mary and Alex helped us think about how we can use play to deal with rough times.

Gabby: All of you in the workshop were the best! You were all game to make lavender salve and to give each other platonic hand massages. You shared best practices on how to engage in deeper levels of community care. Aida from the Beehive hooked us up with “5 ways we learn” and touch was one of them! Gloria asked us how we can think beyond just ourselves and give love when our friend communities are fractured.

Laura W: Gloria really brought it to another level.

Gabby: Gilles told us about how they dress up their cat in costumes and make music videos to de-stress. Like we all laughed and shared and engaged with each other. It was such a good way to kick off camp.

Alex Vega, Design Director: It ended with everyone making new friends by giving each other hand massages with the lavender salve they had made during our open discussion about how to take care of ourselves and each other. Like. I can’t even. So beautiful.

Trent: It’s important that we care for ourselves and it is also important that we care for each other. I hope people were really able to take away from it!

Rachel: During Block A was the first-ever meeting of my writing workshop — I had asked to try something new, which was having a recurring workshop on multiple days of camp so there was time to try different things and build on previous exercises, and was REALLY nervous about how the first day would go. Most of my teaching experience is with bored undergraduates who don’t want to be in class, and so it was hard for me to believe that people would actually choose to spend time on it, for multiple days no less. But people did! We introduced ourselves, did some small exercises, and Heather Hogan guest starred to run an exercise where people experimented with different writing voices and audiences.

Kristin Russo: Before our Intro to Everyone is Gay, Dannielle and I took a walk in the woods to prepare for some of the upcoming workshops. Before camp we’d been untangling a lot of future plans for Everyone Is Gay and it was really hard for us to connect without the stress wrapping us up. That walk in the woods was really special and made me feel re-connected to my business-wife in a much needed way. Then it was time. AHHHHH! Our very first activity!

Carly Usdin, Special Programming Director: I hung out and ran slides for Kristin & Dannielle and it was really fantastic. I knew who they were and what they did before camp, but I hadn’t really had a chance to get to know them as yet.

Dannielle Owens-Reid: Our intro was super fun. We hadn’t planned to use any slides or video or whatever, but Carly and Grace were fucking BOSSES throughout camp, including this.  They kept going with the flow in ways that we shouldn’t have had to make them flow and we were so grateful.

Kristin Russo: This was the first time we were officially chatting with campers… and it ruled. It was awesome to talk to people who knew about our work, but really, really fucking awesome to introduce new humans to what we do, and how we do it. I LOVE CAMP.

Carly: Watching them talk about what they do, and seeing how much passion they bring to it, was really inspiring and wonderful.

Carolyn Wysinger, Contributor & Firebirds Counselor: During workshop session B I ended up in the most awesome conversation about community and social justice with my cabinmates Maddie, Laura M, Morgan and Carmen. Morgan and I had the most accountable and consensual conversation that has ever been had by anyone ever in life. We talked about fucked-up things in our respective communities (without trying to make it about us) and made jokes. It was awesome and accountable and super crass and fun all at once!

Brittani Nichols, The Talent & Tower of Terror Counselor: Oh, I’m sorry but the movement workshop was perfect and everyone that came was perfect. I’m always nervous doing things that require people to get out of their comfort zone because it’s scary! To see so many people show up and have fun and tell stories with their bodies was amazing. Immediately following that workshop was the best I felt all camp. The power of the arts, I tell ya.

Whitney Pow, Former Contributing Editor & Star Runners Counselor: It was so good running the Introvert Meet Up with Heather Hogan! A lot of people showed up, and we had a wonderful time hanging out, drinking tea, making stylish lanyards, and talking about self-care on the mountain.

Heather Hogan, Senior Editor & Hogwarts Counselor: I was actually shocked to see so many introverts at camp. Shocked and excited! Honestly, just knowing there were other people on the mountain who wanted to connect and learn and grow and have fun, but who also were exhausted at the prospect of doing that in the company of so many other humans, it made me feel very at home. Next year, I’m excited to implement the Friend Stop, which is a concept introduced by one of our campers this year. I think it’s going to be a big hit with the introverts!

Whitney: We chatted about the merits of arranging a regular Buffy the Vampire Slayer watching group in your town, complete with beer and Skype commentary for people who might be far away (which is something my friends and I have done!), and organizing board game nights. Speaking of which, I had the opportunity to play Betrayal at House on the Hill at camp with some lovely campers in Falcon one evening, and I had a great time. If you like board games, you should check this one out.

Heather: Whitney was absolutely the best. So calm and reassuring. It set the tone for a really wonderful camp for me.

Jenny Owen-Youngs, The Talent: I led a music hike with Mal! I was uncertain if the concept was meant to be “hike with musicians” or “hike while music happens” so I borrowed a ukulele from Julia and figured Mal and I could wing it and whatever happened happened. We also realized we had zero idea of where any trails were, so we recruited THE AMAZING ROBIN ROEMER to be our trek tech.

Jenny: While Robin told us which hill to hike up, Mal and I sang a song at everyone and quickly learned a valuable lesson about lung capacity and extreme altitude in combination with actively hiking. When we reached our final destination — a beautiful overlook — Mal and I led singalongs (with varying degrees of success) of T Swift’s “Mean,” Beyonce’s “Irreplaceable,” and Nicki Minaj’s “Super Bass” (special thanks to camper Kat for handling the verses; turns out Nicki Minaj songs are not like riding a bike, you gotta USE IT OR LOSE IT). I had a LOT of warm and fuzzy feelings while all this was happening. Then RR led us safely back down the mountain, and no one got lost or was eaten by a bear. SUCCESSFUL HIKE!

Bren Christolear, Editorial Assistant & Fried Green Tomatoes Counselor: This year Megan and I shared the responsibility of setting up all the things. Sunday morning Megan was supposed to be in charge of setting things up and I was just gonna help her. Or so I thought. Megan thought I was supposed to be in charge of setting things up and she was helping me! So then we just decided to help each other all the time. I mean, its camp!

Megan O’Grady, Program Support Coordinator: I think we have the best set-up team that mountain has ever seen.

A-Camp 6.0 Recamps Part One: We Get By With A Little Help From Our New Friends

Once upon a time (May 30th-June 4th, to be specific) in a land far far atop a mountain two hours outside of sunny Los Angeles, approximately 300 queer humans — 250 campers, 50+ staff and talent — gathered for four days and four nights of revelry, intellectual stimulation, dance parties and deep sea bonding. They called it A-Camp 6.0, and it was beautiful! This is the first of four fantastic recaps which serve to ease our collective separation anxiety, give you a behind-the-scenes look at how your A-Camp soysage is made, enable us to wax nostalgic over times gone by and provide prospective campers with a brilliant glimpse into the A-Camp Experience from the Staff Side Of Things. (If you wanna know how it feels to be a camper, you’ll have to come to camp!)

A-Camp was the genesis of an idea Riese had at 3AM in July 2010: the concept was to take the spirit of the website into three glorious dimensions by renting a summer camp in the off-season and jam-packing a long weekend with panels, workshops, discussions, crafts, sports, entertainment, parties and so much more! We gave the idea a spin with an abbreviated, smaller edition of A-Camp in April 2012, followed by full-size full-length camps in September 2012, May 2013, October 2013, May 2014 and May 2015.

This camp was our best camp yet. Seriously, we were very on top of our game. This required raising prices, but we think the extra expense was well worth it — I mean, we had a bouncy castle! We had an all-star cast of special talent: actress and DIY Queen Jasika Nicole, Everyone is Gay super-idols Kristin Russo and Dannielle Owens-Reid, musicians Julia Nunes, Jenny Owen Youngs and Mal Bum and comedians Brittani Nichols, Deanne Smith and Elicia Sanchez. Plus, Orange is the New Black’s Lauren Morelli showed up for an hilarious afternoon Q&A, Kimber Hall joined Brittani for improv and former Miss Kentucky Djuan Trent sang from her soul. A DELIGHTFUL TIME WAS HAD BY ALL.

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Pre-Pre-Pre-Camp

Alex, Design Director and Sponsorship Guru (6th A-Camp): Just FYI, “camp prep” for me (and many others) starts months and months before actual camp. The prep that goes into an event like this is incredible! And I’m honestly amazed every time we’re able to put it all together.

Robin, Photographer and A-Camp Co-Director (6th A-Camp): In addition to the countless hours I spend online with Marni and Riese, we had two planning weekends up in Berkeley/Oakland this year which were pretty fun and productive.

Riese, CEO/Editor-in-Chief, A-Camp Founder and Runaways Counselor (6th A-Camp): The first planning weekend was hard ’cause we had way more staff applications than we had staff positions. At some point I recused myself from the process ’cause I was too influenced by their Autostraddle work.  Because we’d committed to covering everybody’s travel expenses this time, we were forced to be sensible and make Hard Choices. And then feel guilty about it forever.

Robin: The second planning weekend is to finalize the schedule, figure out the plan for things like our special talent involvement, opening night, the state fair, and random things from pigeonhole execution to EQ and supplies.

Riese: I feel like I spent a lot of money on cheese that weekend.

Kai Keller, Calendar Girl and The Beach Counselor (3rd A-Camp): I literally didn’t know I was coming to camp until a couple of months before it happened. I had been living in Thailand for a year and legit having anxiety over staying there or coming back in time for A-Camp 6.0. Guys, camp is really important. After emailing Robin and Marni a bunch, I was added to staff last minute.

Djuan Trent, Contributor and Beehive Counselor (1st A-Camp): Leading up to A-Camp, I’d had a really rough couple of months. But thankfully I got hooked up with Gabby, who made things 1000% better. She was a vet in the game and was so great at basically taking the reins when she figured out my slacker ass was, well, slacking — or, really, I was overwhelmed by all the e-mails! I didn’t know what to pack, I had no idea where my life was… I was just a mess.

Carmen Rios, Straddleverse Editor and Rodeo Disco Counselor (6th A-Camp): I had a lot to do the day before A-Camp travel started, mostly because of my poor planning and the way my life continually happens in large bursts of energy. So basically, I got out of work on the 27th, went immediately to Trader Joe’s to get a reusable shopping bag for important A-Camp reasons, then recruited Carolyn Yates via text to bring me a Bruno Mars hat, ran to a superstore, got lost in the trial size section, went home, wrote two things, packed a little, and tried to learn all the dance moves to Uptown Funk. I wanted to sleep that night, it was even on my to-do list! It didn’t happen.

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Pre-Pre Camp: Thursday, May 28

Gabby Rivera, QPOC Speakeasy Director and Beehive Counselor (5th A-Camp): I had a huge job interview the day before we flew out, packed the night before and packed my sweet baby girl Laura W out of her apartment literally the night before we were to fly out. She’s my ride or die or more like my “did you eat or do you need a hug” lady love.

Stef Schwartz, Music Editor and Buffy The Vampire Gayers Counselor (6th A-Camp): I love Ali Osworth, truly I do, but I worked a full 14-hour day/night before popping home to pack and then ran immediately out the door to pick up Cameron and Ali and head to the airport on zero sleep. Ali was so bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and filled with resounding joy at 5:30 AM that I think the TSA agents at JFK thought she was being sarcastic.

Ali Osworth, Tech Editor and Star Runners Counselor (5th A-Camp): Cameron and Stef woke up at four in the morning to split a car to the airport with me EVEN THOUGH THEY FLEW TWO HOURS LATER THAN I DID! They are champions. They put up with how instantly awake I am in the morning. Well… “put up with” might be too strong a word.

Gabby: At the airport, Stef saw me from across the terminal and bounded like a leather-wearing gazelle on over. I met Heather Hogan for the first time! Gave Ali hugs. And boarded the Virgin flight to LAX, excited that I’d get to watch their safety video again.

Stef: All the New York-based auto-weirdos gathered at the gate to share our pre-camp feelings… and then they all left, and Cameron and I got to sit in the airport for two more hours.

Heather Hogan, Senior Editor and Hogwarts Counselor (1st A-Camp): My girlfriend bought me a new t-shirt with dinosaurs playing Twister on it to wear to meet everyone on the Autostraddle team for the first time. I’ve never been so nervous in my life. I spilled coffee all over my new shirt practically as soon as I arrived at the Virgin American terminal. But Gabby and Stef and Cameron and Laura and Ali were so nice to me anyway that I didn’t even cry about it.

Elicia Sanchez, Comedian and Ghost Power Counselor (2nd A-Camp): The morning I was flying out from Seattle, I was desperately trying to finish an online application for one of the comedy shows I produce to be considered for a local music festival that I hadn’t finished the night before because I’d drank too much at a comedy show and only cared about nachos. I remember pushing the ‘submit’ button on my application and looking up at my oven clock only to realize I had ONE HOUR to get to the airport and get on my plane. Thanks to a helpful Lyft driver and a quick check in at SeaTac, I made it on my flight with 15 minutes to spare.

Carolyn Wysinger, Contributor and Firebirds Counselor (2nd A-Camp): I know for a fact I only slept three hours the night before. This would all come back to haunt me later. I was nervous about leaving my car in the street in Oakland and my ride to the airport almost fell through and I BARELY made the luggage weight requirement. Like really I was at 49.5. I was so happy to finally make it to LAX.

Trent: I wanted to go to camp feeling fully like my fun and alive self, but no matter how much I tried to convince myself that I was fun and alive, I was really feeling sad and weighed down by everything that was going on in my life. I boarded my 6am flight to head to LA thinking, “What do I have to offer anyone other than these totally inconvenient, abnormally unhappy pieces of me? I don’t even feel like myself. This is going to be a wretched experience (not to be confused with ratchet…I’m okay with ratchet, but not wretched).”

Elicia: THANK GOD for Virgin Airlines who serve hummus and tea and have episodes of HBO’s “Jinx” available to purchase from your seat with the last $20 you have to your name. Did I mention I’m really good at being an adult?

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Riese: I have a serious thing where I like to be the first one to arrive at camp and usually I succeed at this — but Abby and I did have to make a detour in Redlands to pick up supplies for my Boxed Wine and String Cheese tasting.

Robin: Marni, Carly and I loaded up the U-Haul with the supplies I’ve been hoarding in my garage, dropped by our storage unit outside camp to grab the rest of our camp stash, and made our way up the mountain!

Marni Kellison, A-Camp Co-Director (6th A-Camp): It seemed impossible that we were going to fit all of the supplies and A/V equipment into that van, but we did it!

Carmen: I arrived at LAX earlier than my early flight was supposed to and immediately found my people. Mostly because when you’re wading through LAX looking for Autostraddle staff, we’re easy to spot.

Yvonne, Senior Editor and Shark Week Counselor (3rd A-Camp): I’m usually the first one to arrive at LAX like at the butt crack of dawn and have to wait for everyone to arrive. It’s just cheaper to fly the first flight out to LAX. It’s totally cool because I befriended the airport staff and they told me their ~*secrets*~. I know where the airport staff eats and it’s a lot cheaper than your $5 airport hummus and pretzels, my friend.

Gabby: The terminal family meet up is always the best. I know it’s silly but it feels amazing. Here we are taking up a section at the baggage claim looking queer and happy as hell. It’s nice to move in a group and to be surrounded by people who wanna give and receive hugs.

KaeLyn Rich, Staff Writer and Shark Week Counselor (1st A-Camp): I had the excited jitters about meeting my Autostraddle family IRL for the very first time and I became immediately tense when I deplaned in LAX and started searching for Terminal 6, though. The first person I saw was Gabby, who greeted me with that big Gabby-love, hugged me and grabbed my bags and then everyone was there and there were hugs and awkward hand gestures and everything was pretty great.

Carmen: I took a seat, did my first of many roll calls, and then took out some snacks for everyone after I was done yelling loudly for all men to avoid the area please and thank you.

Mey Rude, Trans Editor and Hogwarts Counselor (4th A-Camp): I’m pretty sure everyone already knows that I hate flying and being in airports. But I want everyone to know that this was the first time I’ve flown to or from camp that I didn’t cry in the airport! (My mom was on the plane with me, but it still counts) So that’s pretty cool.

Laura Mandanas, Staff Writer and Outsiders Counselor (3rd A-Camp): I’m mad that I didn’t bring more accessories to camp! Everyone looked so cute all the time. Especially Laura Wooley with her hair flowers and everything else. Have mercy.

Elicia: Once I arrived at LAX, I predictably got lost and was cursing myself for not buying cigarettes before leaving Seattle and desperately watched other people smoke as I rolled by with my luggage.

Kai: I got dropped off at LAX with a too-heavy duffel bag and thoughts like, I know this is my third camp, but do I actually know these people? I did. The first things I saw were Ali’s bowtie, Kaylah’s shade, and Gigler’s bright ass hair. Everything exactly how it should be.

Emily Gigler, A-Camp Tumblr Queen and Dance Crew (6th A-Camp): Pre-camp officially began for me when I was at LAX shooting the shit with our growing gaggle of stafflings and suddenly time slowed down and I spun around and locked eyes with Kaylah. It was when I was leaping into her open arms that I knew it was real. It was camp time.

Carolyn Yates, NSFW Editor and Fun Home Counselor (6th A-Camp): Showing up at Terminal 6 in LAX and suddenly being surrounded by a sea of queers always feels instantly and immediately like home, if home were a bare-bones waiting area surrounded by a sea of spectating confused heterosexuals.

Carolyn W: When I got to Terminal 6 I was just randomly walking and I saw a face I vaguely recognized from Facebook and it was KaeLyn!

KaeLyn: We made searching eye contact for a moment, because we’d only met via the QTPOC Speakeasy Facebook group previously, but weird eye contact turned to smiles turned to vigorous hugging pretty quickly.

Carolyn W: Thats where the shenanigans began! I got to the pickup spot and it was a big family reunion!!

KaeLyn: I feel like that pretty much sums up my whole camp experience, actually. “Weird eye contact turned to smiles turned to vigorous hugging pretty quickly.”

Carolyn W: I got to sit and entertain everyone with Heather as I recounted the epic twitter beef between Anita Baker and Cheryl Lynn. Next thing I knew we were taking gal pal pics with women sitting on our laps. Yes my A-Camp started with women sitting on my lap lol.

Gigler: Reuniting with staff friends is the best. Most of these queers I only get to see at camp, so it’s a big fucking deal. First btime staffers seem to feel like old friends pretty quickly; I talked to KaeLyn for about five minutes and I already knew I wanted to hang out with her all camp long.

Elicia: I remembered last year when I awkwardly approached the group, offered some half-assed, sweaty-faced hellos and then sat down, staring at my phone and pretended to do something on it while everyone else caught up and socialized. Luckily for me then, the A-Camp staff are of course, THE NICEST human beings and I was eventually approached by Laura Mandanas, Yvonne Marquez, Gabby Rivera and Rachel Kincaid who began small talk with me and helped me to feel less awkward. This year, once I made my way to the staff meeting spot, it was just like seeing old friends. Too much catching-up to do, not enough time to act standoffish. Also, Gabby managed to get some nice people outside to give us one of their cigarettes so I am basically indebted to her FOR LIFE.

Trent: As I approached the terminal, I gave myself a pep talk, “Everything is going to be so great! You should be so glad you’re here. Just be present in this place where you are and enjoy it. You’re in LA! You’re about to be in the mountains! You have twizzlers! What more could you ask for?” I needed to be present in the moment and embrace all the greatness I was about to experience.  So, I walked into the terminal and it wasn’t hard to spot the bunch of “alternative lifestyle” looking women, eating Girl Scout cookies and vegan oreos, laughing and making all the noise (really only one person was making all the noise, but I won’t point any fingers Carmen). This was my first time meeting many of my fellow Autostraddlers, so I looked nervously for a familiar face: first I saw Rachel, then Yvonne and then Gabby, my co-captain whom I was sure lightweight hated me for all the foot dragging I’d done in our camp-prep. Gabby may have lightweight hated me, but the big warm hug she gave me didn’t show it at all.

KaeLyn: I was super excited to meet Mey, my queer big sis, who I respect so much as a writer and editor. Her cabin and my cabin were cousin cabins and I couldn’t wait to spend more time IRL with her.

Mey: I had been KaeLyn’s queer big sister ever since she joined the AS staff, but I had never seen her in real life before, so I was really excited to get to know her.

Carmen:  Then Stef and I took paparazzi photos because that’s what cool people do in LAX.

KaeLyn: I needed to charge my phone and outlets were scarce, so I ended up sharing a little corner of the airport with Whitney, who was doing some important laptop stuff near a mangy outlet. We chatted for a good 30 minutes about grad school life, being gaysians, long-term relationship stuff, family, and Central NY, and I felt instantly in deep friend love.

Yvonne: Since I got to the terminal so early, I was hungry and wanted to eat at the super secret airport staff spot so I could get a full meal for about $8. I had just met Heather Hogan in real life for the first time and she said she’d come with me. So Heather Hogan and I had lunch at the super secret airport spot and that’s where I discovered that Heather Hogan was in fact the nicest, most kind person I had ever met.

Mey: Heather and I had never met before, and we were leading Hogwarts cabin together. You know how sometimes you don’t want to meet people you look up to online because they can’t possibly be that cool in real life? Heather is that cool and so much cooler. She’s genuinely one of the nicest, most fun people I’ve ever met and I was so glad to have her as my cabin co-leader.

Heather: I fell in love with Mey immediately and wanted to ask her to be my best friend almost on the spot, but I contained myself. Even now, months later, I have to talk myself out of being a fool for her. Today I have almost texted her about Wonder Woman, Steven Universe, Agent Carter, White Canary, and a question about Pokemon cards. I think I’m going to text her about Pokemon cards now, though.

Trent: During this time I listened to Carmen talk about her dog, Taylor, Rachel and I tried to walk to Kinko’s ’til we discovered that LAX is not built for pedestrian escape, and I discovered that I’ve been pronouncing Yvonne’s name incorrectly all my life. While I was enjoying meeting and observing everyone, I began to feel the heaviness again. My chest got tight, my head was hurting, the nervousness resurfaced and the tears began to build in my eyes. I had to make a quick escape because I was not about to be caught crying by all these people I’d just met, and found a random empty lot across from the terminal. I closed my eyes, felt the sun on my face, and let myself cry and stare into space. I kept my head tilted to the sun to absorb its energy and peace and release what was weighing me down. I needed so badly to be in this moment. I needed so badly to have a great experience. I needed to badly to just feel present and happy and alive. My moment to myself was interrupted by the absurd stench of dog poop. I opened my eyes and looked around only to find a huge mound of shit just chillin’ to the left of the the little space I’d found. I took that as my sign to go. Thanks Obama.

Rachel: Why were we going to Kinko’s? What did any of the three of us need there? The answers have been lost to the sands of pre-camp time. But I was so happy to with Trent and Taylor for this absurd errand! There is no one I would rather have been trapped on a terrifying strip of cement next to a highway with.

Carmen: Carolyn Yates and Cee Webster competed an In ‘N Out run for me on that blessed day, the 28th of May, which left me actually speechless because my mouth was so full of food I couldn’t talk for twenty minutes.

The A+ Bee Issue 22: The QTPOC Speakeasy Takeover

Hello, galaxy defenders! Welcome to a very special edition of the A+ Bee. Ring the alarm cause we’re throwing elbows like Xtina in the 90s. No but seriously, we should talk about camp for a second. The QTPOC Speakeasy got together on the mountain and made magic happen. It felt like a non-stop sleepover, social-justice-based workshop slash dance party and also, a family BBQ rolled into one. We hope that next time you’ll join us.

What does that have to do with the A+ Bee? Well, when we got together we did a couple of things and one of them was a Bee Takeover! Elicia and Carolyn were in charge of organizing a crafts session that was focused on filling all the spots in the Bee with Speakeasy-geared content and pics. We thought it’d be a great way to make a thing and show the mountain our faces. Unfortunately, we didn’t get it all together on the mountain cause Chelsey, who is the sweetest and has the best hair on the planet, plans these so far in advance and we (The Speakeasy) just didn’t get our shit together in time.

But y’all know how these family BBQs go… tell people to show up at 4 pm so we can all start eating at 8 pm. Much love to all the members of the QTPOC Speakeasy who put their hearts into this A+ Bee and to Chelsey for putting all of our work together.

Download the PDFhere!

VIDEO: Djuan Trent Feelin’ Herself at A-Camp Will Give You All the Mountain Feels

A-Camp may be over, but that doesn’t mean the feelings from the mountain have to end! (Or the glitter. I have done laundry three times since I’ve been home, but I still keep finding glitter everywhere!) If you were at camp this year, you remember Djuan Trent slaying as a performer and making everyone’s days better and brighter with her wit and her smile. You also remember her selfie stick. She took her selfie stick everywhere! And now you know why: She was documenting the entire magical experience so she could set it to Beyonce and Nicki Minaj‘s “Feelin’ Myself” and share it with us, to make the mountain last all year!

https://youtu.be/GP851txzXds

Makes you hungry for some ancient grains, huh?

A+ Bee Special Edition: A Swarm of A-Camp Bees

Hello inflatable swans!

We just got back from A-Camp and we can’t stop talking about how amazing and great and lovely everything was and how darn cute you all are. This issue of the A+ Bee is a special feature x 5 of all the A-Camp Bees that we put out while we were on the mountain! The A+ Bee was born out of the embers of our love for the A-Camp Bee and this camp we really knocked it out of the park (if I do say so myself) when it came to A-Camp Bee content. It seemed only fair to share them all with you guys! For those of you who were at A-Camp, now you get to see all five Bees in LIVING COLOR, free from the constraints of a laser printer with only black toner, and for those of you who didn’t join us on the mountain, here is a way to experience the tiniest, weirdest piece of it.

DAY 1:

And here is the PDF of Day 1.

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DAY 2:

Hell yeah you can download the PDF of Day 2!

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Day 3:

You’re damn right (Sarah Manning voice) the PDF of Day 3 is available!

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Day 5:

The Day 5 PDF deserves a space in your scrapbook, for sure.

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Day 6:

Everyone is Gay for the Day 6 PDF.

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You may have noticed that Day 4 is missing and I promise that will make sense by the time the next Bee is published! I can promise you that it is amazing and great and so many amazing people put a lot of hard work into it.

Thank you for reading, bumblebees!

xoxo,

Chelsey

OPEN THREAD: A-Camp Was So Amazing We Can Hardly Believe It Was Real

Everybody kept talking about this energy, this “good energy” that was in the air up there, and they were right about that. You arrived boundlessly and we celebrated ceaselessly. You were there to make friends, and I think we all did. You are a truly majestic assortment of human beings and it was a privilege to share a mountaintop with you.

Do you remember? Do you even know where to begin? Can you even state, definitively, which song is stuck in your head right now? Do you remember that first night at the fire circle when Julia Nunes and Jenny Owen Youngs did the most beautiful duet of “With A Little Help From My Friends” ever and the week was so young and so were you and all that energy was already wrapped up in stars?  Do you remember Jasika Nicole dancing like the personification of neon in Club Wolf and how you probably realized way before that moment that she was an actual perfect human? Remember when Kristin Russo and Dannielle Owens-Reid choreographed an enormous and epic lip sync performance in which every one of you outdid your own self? Did you know that banter about where a certain person prefers to eat dinner is actually the funniest thing ever when it’s being discussed by Britttani Nichols and Lauren Morelli? Remember Deanne Smith reminding you that it was 2 PM on a Thursday and you were watching queer cheerleaders, chair dancers and Beyonce groovers perform like old pros, and that this was your life? (Are you remembering to say FUCK IT? Are ya?) Can we take a minute for the A-Camp dance team, the A-Camp Family Band, Elicia Sanchez‘s childhood, Mal Blum‘s gold glittered vest, Djuan Trent‘s selfie stick and tightrope, Kimber Hall‘s group text, and all of Brittani’s monsters? Remember that song you wrote with Jenny and Mal? No seriously, that song was so good, I hope you remember that song, I hope you’re still singing it on the airplane.

You turned up and turned out. You arm-wrestled, witch-crafted, finger-knitted, quilted, made magic, kinker-toyed, fixed bikes, wrote , and sang along to Selena. You talked about being queer adults, size destigmatizers, mixed-race, good allies, feminist beer-drinkers, community caretakers and anal sex enthusiasts. You played basketball and trivia and drank three-ingredient gin cocktails. Most importantly, above all: YOU HAD A TIME.

I left the mountain today slack-jawed, hungry, sunburnt, exhausted, eager to catch up on the website — and so happy, too. So happy! I had the time of my life with you humans, and seeing you have the time of your life with each other made love tumble out of my heart like a rockslide.

Okay, your turn: what was your favorite part of camp? What do you already miss? (Besides the GOURMET DINING, obviously.)

Your Very Own Diarists’ Hike That You Can Have Wherever You Are

Hello my journaling queermos. This year at A-Camp, Hansen and I are hosting a Diarists’ Hike — a hike where we, uh, hike to the scenic overlook where we feast our eyes upon the majestic Big Bear mountains, write in our journals and pray we don’t become prey for any majestic big bears.

We at Autostraddle are, in general, pretty big fans of the journal. We had a whole Dear Queer Diary column about keeping a journal; we run an A+ segment wherein we share excerpts from our own diaries. I’m still working up the courage to pitch to that segment, by the way, because I’m convinced that I don’t sound nice in my journals, that maybe the deepest-truest part of my soul is a rotten apple. But I digress. Journaling.

I’m utterly convinced that keeping a journal of some kind is the most valuable thing you can do if you are a creative person or work in a creative field (artist, writer, musician, etc.). I’m fairly convinced that keeping a journal of some kind is the most valuable thing you can do if you are any sort of human at all (because everyone needs to converse with themselves somehow, sanity, etc.). That’s just my opinion, of course. I highly recommend it.

But what does one do when they light a candle, sit down with their journal and stare at the blank page and… nothing? It happens. I find this means I am placing some sort of expectation on myself for how my journal should look/sound/behave/operate. There is no one right way to journal — and if it helps, likely no one will ever ask to read it unless you work at Autostraddle. If it doesn’t help, one time instead of writing something deep, I made my grocery list and went grocery shopping. At least it was a productive session in one way or another.

Mostly what I do, though, is I go for a walk. And that, my unicorn-fairy-lovelies, is why the Hike.

Because when you can’t think of what in your life to write about, you should go outside and put yourself in life. And write about that. Now I know not all of us can walk a mountain range. But I have a feeling many of us can go outside and simply describe. Not just what you see, either — how do things smell? Feel? Hear? Don’t taste anything if you’re out in the wilderness because that’s inadvisable. Your neighbor walks by — how do you know them? Do you know them at all? What do you imagine they do with their day, if you were the Sims-controller if their life? When was the last time they spoke to you. You pass a restaurant on a busy city street that you never noticed before — what was in its place last you checked?

See? It doesn’t matter where you are. Starting with the world around you is like falling down the clickhole when you’re googling elaborate Cate Blanchett fan fiction — the first step will lead you somewhere, and you may surprise yourself with what you notice. What’s important to you. How you see the world and move through it.

Or you can come up all zeros again. That’s where this handy post comes in. See, if people’s brains begin to drool nothing all over their journal on the hike, we have a dandy hat they can draw a prompt from. We’re giving you 13 of those prompts right here, right now. Some of the most surprising things I’ve written have come out of prompts I didn’t feel strongly about. Sometimes having a strong preference for something is just resistance to territory your brain actually ought to be at that moment.

Sally forth, good queers, and journal!

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1. This is a prompt about endings. Something in your life is coming to an end, and something else is beginning — write about the transition space you’re exploring right now. What do you need to move forward? What do you need to let go? If you aren’t closing one epoch in favor of another at the moment, there must be something you’ve been carrying that you wish with all your heart and soul that you could put down. What is it?
2. Write about the first time you’ve felt part of a community — or write about your perfect community. Or both.
3. Do you ever feel like you want to run away and start a new life under a new name and do something completely different? Write about that imaginary adventure.
4. Close your eyes and take a deep breath. You smell something from your childhood. What is it? Where does that smell lead you? Paint a word picture of the whole scene, the whole memory.
5. Do you remember your first lie? What was it? What is your relationship to stretching the truth? When was the last time you told a fib?
6. What is your real life superpower? Do you use it for good, or for evil? What can you do in your life to cultivate the superpowers you want — or to cultivate a responsible, efficient use of the superpowers you already have.
7. Write about a time where you got away with something that you shouldn’t have.
8. In your life to this point, what moment has sucked the worst? Paint a picture of that moment — how far from it are you? What kind of reflection has that distance brought?
9. Listen to me. Do not organize your mind right now. Shake it up, jumble it until it’s just a bunch of connections firing into space — just a bunch of snowflakes behind the glass of a snow globe. Now. Write. Don’t think. Just put words down and let the connections form where they may.
10. Write about fighting. Everyone fights — do you fight the system? The patriarchy? Your family? Yourself? What are you fighting right now? What do you hope for regarding the outcome?
11. Make a list of the things you’re committed to doing right now — do you think you’ve got too many things? Too few? Or is it about quality — are these the sorts of things you want to be responsible for or carry with you? Make a new list — fantasy commitment list. What do you wish you could be spending your time on?
12. Complete a whole journal entry without using words.
13. You are looking at a map of the world — on it, there are pins that represent places where you left pieces of your heart. Write the pins. What piece of your heart did you leave? Why did it break off and decide to stay?

Liquor On The Mountain: Three-Ingredient Drinks are the Bees’ Knees

Hello possum-friends! We’re at Camp this week, CAN YOU TELL? And one of the new workshops Alex Vega and I are running this Camp is cocktail making, and we’re focusing on three-ingredient drinks because they’re awesome and everyone who wants to mix drinks should know a few good ones.

Now I know sometimes I can get a little complicated with my drinks (like when I grew a special kind of mint just for a pun). But that’s because this is my fun and I get to pretend I’m a potions student at Hogwarts. Practically speaking, you want to know a couple of quick n’ easy drinks for surprise company or to prevent panic ordering at a bar with an unfamiliar spread.

It’s also good to know three ingredient drinks because they’re easy to scale in your head—if you’re mixing for you and a friend, just multiply everything by two real quick without having to write things out because otherwise you forget them and, what? No, of course when I double my complex drinks I don’t have to write it down and put it on my bar because I will almost definitely fuck it up if I don’t do that, you’re nuts.

Three-ingredient drinks are also easy to perfect to your taste — too sweet? Less of the sugar. Too sour? Less of the juice! Too drunk? Your alcohol ratio may be off. Because there are only three ingredients, nothing is doing subtle work and you can pick out your ‘culprit.’ It’s also then easy to riff on a three-ingredient drink if you want to do something more complex, which is easier to talk through if we’ve got an example in front of us. That brings me to today’s drink:

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The Bees’ Knees

(or the Bee’s Knees? I’m choosing to go with the plural possessive because no one bee is responsible for the honey. Or we could call it the Beeses Kneeses.)

You will need:

• a shaker
• a jigger
• some ice
• 1/4 oz. honey
• 1/2 oz. lemon juice
• 2 oz. gin (I’m using The Botanist in my house, but we’ll be using Farmers Organic on the mountain).
• lemon peel to garnish
• and obvi a glass to serve it in. I’m using a jam jar DO YOU SEE A PATTERN HERE?

Fill your shaker about a third of the way full with ice. Have I ever said why you shake some drinks and stir others? I can’t remember. Shaking is reserved for things you really need to mix up like eggs or fruit juices or simple syrup. Stirring is for when the drink is made with ALL LIQUOR. (There are a few three-ingredient drinks that are all liquor — the Negroni pops to mind.) Never put seltzer, soda or tonic water in a shaker. You’d think I wouldn’t have to say that, because common sense, but the thing about people shaking drinks who don’t do it on the reg is that they’re usually a bit tipsy and logic no longer applies to them. I have received a few text messages asking me about seltzer in a shaker. But I digress, as there’s no seltzer in this recipe. Onward!

Juice your lemon! Slice your lemon length-wise for optimal juice. I don’t know why it works, but it does.

Measure out 1/2 oz. lemon juice and pour it into the icy shaker. Then go with the 1/4 oz. honey.

Now there’s almost no way you’re going to come out of this without a honey-finger. (My fiancée: “you could get a spoon or a knife so you could scrape it against the side or… or your finger, okay”) Life is more fun when you have a gal pal or other sort of buddy to lick it off for you.

Add the 2 oz. of gin and SHAKE SHAKE SHAKE.

Strain into a cute glass and serve to your cute pal.

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Now remember I was talking about three ingredient drinks being cool to riff on? Let’s figure out what kind of things we could do once we have this perfected. Oooh, oh, for a real easy variation, how about throwing in a 1/4 oz. of orange juice for funsies? Or, if you really want to Hogwarts it up, you could make a lavender infused gin and garnish with lavender! See, the possibilities are endless when you have a solid base. I bet y’all can come up with some other tasty variations on your own.

Tell Me What You Want, What You Really Really Want: A Roundtable on How We Want to Feel

feature image via Spirited Well-Being.

I’m sure you all know the story by now but here we go: I read The Desire Map on the way to A-Camp 5 and it totally changed my life, or at least how I was living it and experiencing it. Especially how I was feeling about it. Because I can’t stop talking about this fucking book, Rachel and I are going to lead a queer Desire Map circle at A-Camp 6, which means we’ll be spending an hour or so talking about how we want to feel, where we want to go, and who we want to be, and I won’t cry at all!

One of the core principles in The Desire Map is the concept of “core desired feelings,” which are the feelings that live super deep inside of your soul and guide your every waking moment. You might feel sad because you just got into a fight with your friend or happy because you just got a raise, but those feelings are temporary and they fade. But desiring to feel “powerful” or “enlightened” might be longer-lasting feelings that you use to evaluate your next steps, make crucial decisions, and figure out what makes you happy. Those feelings are your CDFs.

The idea is that once you start focusing on how you want to feel, you start making different choices. Instead of looking for the dream job, you start to look for a sense of stability in the smallest ways. Instead of exhaustingly waiting for your dream grrl to come along, you can start finding love in your other relationships until you’re so full of it you burst. By looking deep into your heart and your brain and all the little nerve endings in your body, you start to realize that you don’t have to wait ’til you have the family or wait ’til you have the dream job to feel the things those goals were gonna make you feel. And once you figure out what feeling you were chasing, you can start working toward it – and getting a solid taste of it — every day.

And that, my friend, seriously changes everything.

A few of us on Team Autostraddle have read The Desire Map, and some of us haven’t but still are self-aware enough to know what guiding principles we’re using to build our lives and our futures. In honor of today’s Desire Map circle – and so y’all who aren’t on the mountain can get in on the soul-spilling – I asked them to share with us what their core desired feelings are, and how they change their lives.

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GROUNDED / PRESENT: Beth, Tarot Writer

I’m an excitable, energetic person who generally has no trouble starting projects, making plans and getting things done. Which is awesome – I really value this energy – but I often feel like my feet aren’t actually touching the ground, like things aren’t tangible, or else I totally neglect my physical needs – I don’t eat properly, or I work in an uncomfortable position for hours and get back-ache. It’s not sexy and it’s not cool!

I find it really helpful to describe the different areas of my life in terms of the four elements: fire, water, earth and air. For me, fire represents that excited, impassioned energy, water is my emotions and intuition, earth is my physical and sensual world, the stuff that connects me to my environment and community, and air is my intellect and sense of logic. I generally have a lot of fire (that’s my drive and how I get stuff done) and air (lots of thinking and planning, mind-maps, lists) …water – my emotional self – comes and goes, but the thing I struggle most with is earth.

Here are a few ways I ground myself and bring more earthy, sensual, nourishing energy into my life:

• Gardening. Digging. I don’t have a garden, but even tending a few potted herbs feels good. And now the nights are getting lighter I’m gonna ask my friend if I can help out on her allotment.
• Going out to work. I live on a small boat and there’s definitely no comfy home office – if I’m working from home I’m scrunched on the sofa or sprawled on the bed, which is really bad for my back. I’ve got a studio now (a major self-care investment which is worth every penny – if you can afford it, you should seriously consider it) but before that I would go sit in two different cafes nearby where the light was good and the seats were comfortable.
• Days out. Climbing a hill, going to the seaside, a walk in the woods. Phone off. Just being super aware of the feel of tree-bark, the sound of water, the texture of the ground under your feet.
• Going to the gym. I resisted this for years, I thought ‘the gym’ was for other people. Now I go two or three times a week and it makes me feel amazing.
• Keeping healthy food in the fridge at my studio so I can make myself a decent lunch (rather than drinking five coffees and skipping lunch/buying a pie for the third day running) – here’s a cool Autostraddle post about doing that!
• Simply leaving the house! A morning walk before looking at the internet, a stroll before bed – you never regret this, it’s just creating the routine that’s difficult. DO IT!
• DIY. Paint a wall. Put up a shelf. Get crafty. Make a thing and post it to a faraway friend.
• Best of all and totally free: lie on the ground. Spread your arms like you’re making a snow angel. Breathe. Feel the sun. Or the rain!

I also do tarot readings for myself where I consciously choose the cards that represent the feelings I want to have. Seeing those deliberately-chosen feelings laid out in front of me helps me to stick with my intentions. I did this in quite a major way a month ago, where I built a ritual around the specific ways I wanted to ground myself.

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SEEN: Mey, Trans Editor

For my entire life when people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up I had only one answer, “I want to be famous.” Sometimes that meant a famous musician, sometimes that meant a famous filmmaker, sometimes that meant a famous paleontologist (Jurassic Park gave me unrealistic expectations about some things), a famous politician, or more usually, a famous writer. I didn’t know what career or life I wanted, all I knew was that I wanted people to know who I was and to know my story.

The thing was, for most of my life, I couldn’t be seen. No one would know who I was or what my story was. I was hiding in the closet and no one knew that I was a woman or that I was queer. I also silenced my voice in other ways because I thought that if one part of my life was out there for the public to see, maybe other, more secret parts would be too. So I hid. I was afraid to really put myself out there, I was reluctant to share things about myself, even with my closest friends, I would talk about myself a lot, but I would do it in a way that deflected from talking about my true self.

Now, I do things to make sure that I am seen and known. I live proudly and openly as a trans woman. I live proudly and openly as a lesbian and a queer woman. Those are important parts of who I am and I worked so long and hard to hide them, that now that I’m able to talk about being queer and trans, I do so as much as I can. I want people to not just know who and what I am, but I want them to really see that and to acknowledge it. I’m a queer transgender Latina lesbian, and I am proudly those things. People like me don’t usually get to be seen. I know that I usually pass as white, and so because of that, I don’t have to worry about violence the way that Black and darker-skinned Latina trans women do, and I also know that my light-skinned privilege gives me more of a voice, and so I’m not going to compare my struggle to be seen to Black trans women or other trans women of color, but it’s still hard.

Writing for Autostraddle helps me to be seen. I’m able to write about who I am and have a platform where I can share it with more people than I could have ever hoped before. I’m able to write personal essays that, sometimes, talk about things that are very deeply rooted and closely guarded in my heart. By sharing my story like this and by being so public with my life, and by doing it online, where it will live on forever, I can make sure that I’m seen, that my life counts and that I don’t become just another statistic.

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SATISFIED: Rachel, Managing Editor

Virtually never have I felt like I was doing enough, or like I was done with something. As a child there was a rule that I had to schedule a conference with my teacher if at any point I had less than an A in a class — A- wasn’t good enough — and as a young adult I juggled multiple part-time jobs with unpaid internships and honors theses, ensuring that no matter how hard I worked and how much I got done I was always still behind because somehow that was comforting, knowing that there was always something waiting for me to throw myself into. After a while, though, this gets really exhausting! I never showed writing to anyone else or sent it out for publication because I was always convinced it still needed work and could be better; I would agree to take on eight zillion projects and then get resentful when I was sleeping three hours a night and falling asleep at the wheel. Something changed in my life and it stopped feeling like an accomplishment in and of itself to be always working, or it stopped doing what it had been doing for me. I started to want to feel like I could, you know, relax. I wanted to finally have done enough work that it felt like enough. But that isn’t really a thing! At least not for my weirdo relationship with work.

So instead, I’m working on trying to find pleasure and fulfillment from tasks themselves, rather than obsessing with the completion of them. It might not sound like much, but in my tiny hellhole of a brain, it is. Forget whether I achieved the tacit goal of Eating Healthy Homemade Meals every day this week — did I enjoy what I ate for breakfast this morning? Regardless of whether I got enough done on this personal essay, at least for right now, did I get something out of the process of writing it? Ignoring briefly whether it was a productive day, was it a day where I felt happy?

This isn’t to say that I feel fulfilled or, you know, gorged on life’s small pleasures every moment of every day, but that I have a wider range of options: rather than feeling shitty basically all the time because the only time I deserved to not feel shitty was when everything had been done perfectly and that is never, I have the possibility of sometimes feeling like things are okay, like on the whole things are pretty good actually. Like maybe when I look around and take stock of things I’m actually pretty satisfied with how they’re going.

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OPEN: KaeLyn, Contributing Editor & Margaret Cho Impersonator

I want to write that my guiding principle is balance. That is what I often strive towards and what always seems just out of reach. Sometimes I get so close I can smell it, like the lingering scent of it, like when you can breathe in the cologne of some stranger in an elevator who must have just recently gotten off on another floor…but you missed them completely. So close. Other times it feels like balance is on another continent, across the ocean, drifting ever-so-slightly farther away with as I doggie paddle against the tide. I’m not very good at balance.

However, I thrive under stress. I get more done when my to-do list is long. When my list is short, I find it impossible to focus and feel unproductive. It turns out, I don’t want to have the perfectly balanced schedule or life plan. I don’t think I’d even know what to do with that kind of equilibrium. What I really want is to be sure I’m staying open. To new opportunities, to scary and possibly painful experiences, to radically shifting goals, to reprioritizing my priorities, to unruly escapism, to all of life’s greatest gifts. I want to always be willing to invite new experiences in, to change my mind, to make the choice to see something through or let it fall away, to reinvent myself over and over.

When I am most stressed, when balance seems impossible, that is when I close up. I don’t have time or space to think beyond the very next minute. How many minutes until the next hour? How many hours until the next day? How many days until I can rest? There are times when it has to be this way, because I put so much on my schedule, when I start to work myself into exhaustion. These are the times I need to work extra hard to stay open, to remembering what the whole picture looks like when I just want to focus on the minutiae.

When I applied to write for Autostraddle, I was pretty sure I was making the worst decision ever. I was already working one full-time job and one side job. I was simultaneously re-matriculating into a grad program to finish a degree I’d put off years ago. We were talking about having a kid and my life plan was supposed to include cutting back on my commitments, quitting some of the nonprofit boards I’m on, scaling back. I never thought I’d be plucked from the first rounds of applicants. It was exciting to think about, but I didn’t really plan for actually doing it. When I was brought into the first round of potential CEs, I was thrilled and also panicked. I flirted with dropping out of the search because I knew I didn’t have the time, realistically, balance-wise. My spouse, the person who convinced me I needed to pare down my schedule, was also the person who told me to stick it out with Autostraddle. Will this make you happy? Would you love it? he asked and I knew that I would.

I had felt distant from real-life queer community for a while, as many of my queer friends were not actively engaged in grassroots queer activism anymore. We got older. People settled into jobs, relationships, parenting, homesteading, etc. or they didn’t settle at all and were in constant survival mode. I wasn’t entirely sure where my queer adulthood fit into all of that. I studied creative writing in undergrad, but I had stopped writing for myself years ago and I didn’t see myself as a writer anymore. Waffle encouraged me to be open, to see where the Autostraddle thing went, against my better judgement that I really didn’t see where I’d have time.

I’m so glad I stuck it out. I am so healed and lifted by being surrounded by these beautiful queer humans who are actively engaged in making the world a little bit better through art, politics, humor, and words. Autostraddle broke me wide open. And I’ve remained open. I am open to my future family plans with Waffle, as well as more open to the possibility that it might not work out and knowing we’ll be OK. I’m open to continuing on my current (full-time) career path or going in an entirely different direction, a direction I hadn’t really considered as viable before I started writing for AS. I’ve always been flexible and productive under duress, but more than I ever have been in the past decade, I’m staying open to multiple futures, to intentionally not knowing exactly what comes next, to life stretching out before me like a ripe, ripe dream.

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BALANCED: Ali, Geekery Editor

Relatively speaking, balance has not always been my guiding principle and it is not a natural state for me. Growing up, my guiding principle might have been BALLS TO THE WALL if that were a thing that people said back then. I didn’t do anything half-way and when I decided to do something, I did it to the extreme. Fifth grade required us to make brochures for a book we read, and I made an oversized one out of tri-fold poster board that could be seen across the library. “If you want people to like you more,” a friend said, “maybe you should cut back on the A pluses.” A) that is terrible advice, wtf was wrong with you? and b) that is when I realized that perhaps throwing every piece of energy I have into something might not be what everyone is inclined to do. Until that point, I just assumed all other humans did that.

High school saw me decide to join color guard in our competitive, group six marching band (if you’re not familiar with band, group six is a FUCKING HUGE BAND). I hated it the first year, and I wasn’t any good at it. We had to be on the hot, sun-beaten field and there was a dead deer off the highway where we were practicing so our entire bandcamp was spent in roadkill stench. I stuck through that year and three more out of sheer will power. I grew to love it, but it solidified an opinion I’d long held: anything worth having meant suffering.

I suppose these are admirable qualities by themselves; certainly they appear to be when they appear to lead to productivity and success. But they caused me to ignore a low-grade, ever-present unhappiness to pursue a career in theatre just because performing was the first thing I found that I was even a little bit good at. Quitting was unheard of, and improving my craft was supposed to be so hard as to make me feel tortured, right? RIGHT!? When I did finally figure out I wanted to be a writer and set about obtaining a job in the tech industry to support my writing, it lead me to constant exhaustion while I tried to like a job that I simply didn’t like, working for a large corporation that, for all it’s wonderful bits, still treated people like a commodity in the end. When I think the kinds of sacrifices I made in the name of things I believed my career to be, I sometimes get a little ill. I could’ve been this happy so much sooner if I’d just added a little balance.

And by balance, I mean this—I don’t think I’m ever going to completely conquer my natural tendency to throw every piece of my energy into things. But I can, say, not throw all of it into career and I can balance the things I want out of my actual life with my drive. I can alternate which field I sew my fucks in: fields need to lie fallow or they stop growing things. That’s how I started pulling myself out of an unhappiness spiral: I added a little bit of moderation to my go-go-go. I pulled back and reassessed the actual amount of energy I had and divided it a little more equally. I discovered that the best way to harness my pedal-to-the-metal superpowers was to switch tasks several times throughout the day in a way that traditional work environments don’t generally support, so I structured my life to work from home. I discovered I’d been neglecting my friendships in favor of career, so I structured my work-from-home schedule to allow me to hang out with them more. And mostly, I figured out how to balance my LET’S BEST WHATEVER THE HECK THIS IS with asking myself if I’m doing so in service of what I want my whole life (not just part of my life, and not just a very temporary part of my life) to look like. And using the past tense here is a total falsehood, so perhaps I should add the word “mostly.” I mostly discovered. I mostly reassessed. I mostly figured out.

Balance is a constant struggle for me, and every day is a new day in which I succeed or fail at it. But by making sure I’m addressing myself as a whole person instead of leveling up in only one area, I am for sure making better decisions overall. I don’t think balance will ever be easy for me. But then again, everything worth having is worth a struggle.

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INTENTIONAL: Cecelia, Intern

As a junior in college, I’m deep in the midst of experiencing kaleidoscopic identity crisis for the first time. Right now, life is a collection of scenarios that all require me to make “formative” choices about who I am. I want all the versions of myself within different scenarios to add up and form one complete, whole person. But this isn’t how it works. Who I am at the office for my first professional internship is wildly different from the person who I am at the club with a girl, which is wildly different from the person that I am in classes for my major or my minor.

I know we’ve all been socialized to feel as though we have to be one identifiable thing, and that the idea of fitting within a box is in service of some really oppressive systems. I know that. But I’m a Sagittarius through and through (impossibly it’s my Ascendant, Sun, and Moon sign) and so more than anything else, I crave honesty and authenticity in life. It’s exhausting to always mirror others, to lose myself in the scenarios I encounter. It only takes a moment to check in, to critically ask: what am I putting my energy into, and why? The goal of living with intention is to build a strong sense of self for my rapidly approaching free fall into the world.

I want to experience life openly – to be present and allow people, places and things to fully affect me in the moment. But blindly saying yes to every opportunity stretches me so thin that I lose my focus in the chaos. With intention, other words follow, like focus and direction. I’m not worried about having everything figured out. But wherever I go in this world, I want to be able to feel strong in the choices I have made with full intention.

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BLISSED OUT: Carmen, Feminism & Straddleverse Editor

I want to do things just because they feel good.

I’ve certainly dabbled in hedonism and recklessness before, and I think I double-majored in them in college, but I’m also a sometimes-Type-A workaholic with an overachiever complex. I make lists and do what’s responsible and right and try to get as much done as possible. As of late, it’s meant sacrificing my “me time,” and it’s meant becoming so exhausted over time that I’m pretty sure my body is falling apart.

When I say I wanna be “blissed out,” it means I want to be extra content, super happy, joyful to the point where it flows in my bones. I know this is possible, because I’ve felt this way before, all when I was wildly different people and all at various times. I know that if I tap into my soul and really evaluate my entire life, I’ll be able to figure out what can get me there and keep me there. I know I want to return to optimism. I know I want to see the beauty in everything and remember what I’m grateful for, even when I’m on my grind or struggling with something really hard. I know I wanna be fucking thrilled to be alive. And in order to do that, I need to take back my life. I need to do things because they fulfill me, not because someone asked me to do them or I felt obligated to do them or I read in a book somewhere that doing them would enrich my life.

Over time, that’s going to involve some big changes, none of which I’m really quite ready to put on the Internet (just yet). But in the day-to-day, it means carving out that “me time” and using it to rediscover the spark that used to keep me going. I’ve been spacing out deadlines and resisting the urge to overbook myself, which means I’m less stressed when I start the day and I’m giving myself more time to recharge. I’ve started “unplugging” when I get home from work or when I go on vacation, which feels amazing and really helps me clear my head. And I wake up in the morning earlier than I have to, just so I can watch television and hang out with Eli.

I want to do things just because they feel good. The hope is that once I let myself do it in little pieces, I can build an entire life of it.

Unplug Your Camping, Keep Your Nerd

feature image via Shutterstock

Hello Camp Beavers! I’m on a mountain with 300 queerdos right now, which means I hope nothing big happened in the tech world this week because I’m writing this post approximately a billion years in advance. If it did, don’t worry; we’ll talk about it when we all descend from our mountain with tired eyes and full hearts.

Queer Your Tech with Fun is always hard to make Camp-themed, mostly because things like phones don’t work on the mountain and who wants to bring a computer and work through nature. IT’S NATURE, UNPLUG YOUR ISH. Yet I’ve managed to make Queer Your Tech Camp-themed for two years running. This year, however, I’m going to encourage everyone to unplug when they take their closest queer pack into the woods—as little tech as possible is the name of the game. But that doesn’t mean you need to give up your nerd. Here are a few things I’ve found on the internet that can help.

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Outdoor Gear

Camping obviously involves going outside.

8-Bit Sunglasses, $7.99

Look like you’re straight out of a video game. But like a retro one. I actually think an A-Camper has these and that’s why I know they exist?

Lightsaber BBQ Tongs, $34.99

This is modeled after Vader’s lightsaber and it makes the noises. Luke, I am your burger.

Backpack of Holding, $49.99

Okay, so it wouldn’t be good for crazy outdoorsy camping or major hiking. It’s not big enough for that, doesn’t distribute weight like some of the more tactical hiking backpacks and is water resistant but not water proof. The kind of camping this is good for is camping in cabins, or in tents but on a campground. The kind of outdoors fun where the point is to drink beer, relax and bring a few things with you overnight. Basically, my kind of camping.

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Keeping Warm

Because if you’re camping right now, and specifically where we are, it’s Summer during the day and Winter at night.

Flag Your House Pajama Pants, $24.99

Strictly Ravenclaw, myself. You?

Charmander Onesie, $69

The warmest one I could find. Toasty warm.

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Very Portable Games

Boardgames are all about bonding with your fellow queermos. Here’s some that won’t take up a ton of space in your backpack.

Gloom, $16.99

In the tradition of campfire tales, see if you can give your family of characters the worst lives possible before killing them off. This game is all about storytelling — make it as horrifyingly funny as you wish. Takes up so little space in your backpack because it’s just a deck of cards!

Ultimate Werewolf, $20

The most fun party game I have ever played, I’m obsessed with Ultimate Werewolf. This is a bluffing game that pits two teams against each other: villagers and werewolves. And don’t worry about your group of friends being too big to play: this game accommodates up to 75 people.

Dread, $24 (plus the cost of Jenga)

Dread is a horror role playing game where success or failure isn’t based on a roll of the dice, but on removing a Jenga block. Even though the Jenga blocks do take up a bit more space than the other two (card-based) games, this RPG is basically a responsive campfire tale. So it’s definitely a great pick. You can also get the book for $3 as a PDF, but we’re unplugging. So if you can spring for the book, spring for the book.

So what did I miss? And before you tell me about the Tauntaun sleeping bag, I beat you to it!

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This has been the one-hundred-thirtieth installment of Queer Your Tech with Fun, Autostraddle’s nerdy tech column. Not everything we cover is queer per se, but we talk about customizing this awesome technology you’ve got. Having it our way, expressing our appy selves just like we do with our identities. Here we can talk about anything from app recommendations to choosing a wireless printer to websites you have to bookmark to any other fun shit we can do with technology. Header by Rory Midhani.

Saturday Morning Cartoons: Essence of Camp

Welcome to Saturday Morning Cartoons, a segment where four artists take turns delighting you with their whimsy, facts and punchlines on Saturday mornings! Our esteemed cartoon critters are Cameron Glavin, Anna Bongiovanni, Megan Prazenica and Yao Xiao. Today’s cartoon is by Cameron.

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Friday Open Thread: Not At A-Camp (but I’m Getting Married Tomorrow)

Hello Sparkle Partiers! As you’re no doubt all aware, most of the Autostraddle team is off getting ready to start A-Camp tomorrow, and that’s pretty awesome for them. As you can tell by the fact that I’m hosting the Open Thread today, I’m not at A-Camp. But that’s okay because I get to hang out with all of you today, and that gives me almost the same warm fuzzy feels, because ‘Straddlers bring the love no matter where they’re at.

Oh, you want to know why I’m not at Camp? Well, in the most spectacular alignment of the queer stars and rainbow chakras, I managed to set my big gay wedding day for the exact same day that A-Camp starts. Seriously… just after we had put down all our expensive deposits, I found out the dates for Camp and proceeded to cry for about three days because I’ve been dreaming of Camp since I started with Autostraddle last summer. My totally amazing partner actually offered to change our wedding date so I could go, but marrying her is pretty much the only thing in the world that I would rather be doing than camp. I mean, yes, we could have had an awesome wedding on the mountain like Carrie and Bren, but decided we wanted to like, our families to be there I guess. I wish I could invite all of you not-at-camp folks to the wedding, because I feel like nothing would make my mother more uncomfortable than hundreds of awesome queer people suddenly bursting through the doors of our reception.

So, my lovely sugar pops, I want to hear all about how you’re coping with not being at camp. Are you having a meet-up? Do you have some fabulous brunch plans? Did you decide to just run off and go camping and commune with nature and dance naked in the woods somewhere else instead. (I’m not saying there’s definitely named dancing at A-Camp, but I’d like to think there is.). Alternatively, tell me your awesome queer wedding stories (whether it was your wedding or someone else’s), so I can read them during my rehearsal dinner tonight and excuse it as “work”. Or just tell me about your week, your triumphs, your disappointments, your ridiculous moments, or what very silly thing your cat did. The more you talk to me, the less I have to talk to my mother!

Oh, and if you ask nicely (and I stay sober enough to operate my phone), I’ll try to post a few wedding photos on this thread on Saturday.

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How To Post A Photo In The Comments:

1. Find a photo! This is the easy part. Find a photo on the web, right click (on a Mac, control+click), hit “Copy Image URL” and then…

2. Code it in to your comment! Use the following code, and use a DIRECT LINK to the image. Your image link should end in .JPG or .GIF or .PNG or .CallMeWhateverYouWant even. I don’t care, but it should be an image suffix! KINDA LIKE THIS:

<img src=”http://imagelink.jpg”>

If you need to upload the photo you love from your computer, try using imgur. To learn more about posting photos, check out Ali’s step-by-step guide.

How To Post A Video In The Comments, Too:

1. Find a video on YouTube or Vimeo or WHATEVER and click “embed.” Copy that code, but first make sure it’s for 640 px wide or less. If your player is too large, it will not display properly.

2. Copy the code and paste it directly into your comment.

3. Go forth and jam.

Liquor On the Mountain: Coppercraft Whiskey and a Guide to Single-Distillery Tastings

Hello whiskey whiskers! Every Camp, Alex Vega and I lead a whiskey tasting of some sort. Lately, we’ve been getting sponsors we love and centering our tasting around them. This time we love our sponsor so much, that we’re doing a tasting ENTIRELY with their whiskey. I’m here to talk about the benefits of doing that.

But first, let’s talk about how you can have a whiskey tasting where you live! The merits of such an idea are many: get your personal grease bats all over your house to hang out and bond is obviously the first one. Sometimes hanging out is easier with a lightly-structured activity. Light structure appeals to many different levels of social angst.

Then the other benefit is that when you pool your groups money to purchase four or five bottles of whiskey, it might actually be cheaper than a night out on the town. It certainly is in New York City, where I live. Having people over and drinking in my apartment is infinitely less stressful for my wallet, even if the upfront costs seem higher.

And lastly, I love getting queer women and non-binary folks and basically anyone who’s not a straight cis white dude into an area of interest and expertise typically dominated by straight cis white dudes. Hosting a queermo whiskey tasting night helps break the hegemony of aged spirits, and to that I say huzzah.

Now onto my reason to consider a single-distillery tasting. In the past, we’ve made sure to taste many different whiskeys to get as wide a variety as possible. This is a great tactic because then the breadth of differences is what you talk about; the contrast between the wildly different whiskeys. But! It does mean that at the end of our whiskey tasting, our tasters come away with a great understanding of differences, but not so much opportunity to talk about similarities and to find unified things they like in a whiskey. And ultimately, that’s one of the many goals to choose from when participating in a whiskey tasting — sure, to find individual whiskeys that you enjoy. But also to find similarities so that when you’re faced with a menu or with a shelf full of bottles you never seen, you know what questions to ask to figure out what new thing you’re likely to enjoy. As an example, I know I like rye whiskeys that have a bit of spice on the finish because I’ve tasted quite a few of them and I’ve never met one I didn’t like.

Limitting a tasting to one specific distillery is like reading something you like and then picking up every book the author ever wrote. Becoming familiar with one distillery’s whiskeys gives you the chance to talk about their body of work as a whole, which is a really interesting way to discuss things — where can you sense the commonalities? What would you describe this distillery’s style as? It also allows a group of people to develop an expertise relatively quickly. This year, we picked Coppercraft. I became acquainted with them when Autostraddle reader Jenney Grant emailed me. She works there and felt very strongly that we would love Coppercraft and Coppercraft would love us; she was correct.

Coppercraft is a fairly new craft distillery that makes a bunch of different things—we actually featured their gin in our winter drink this year (remember the Perfect Penguin Martinis?). This won’t be the first time I’m tasting their aged whiskeys — here’s what we’re drooling over this Camp.

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100% Corn Whiskey

This is definitely on the sweeter side of whiskey, perfect for people who are just starting out on their whiskey journey. Hints of caramel!

High Wheat Whiskey

I really like that you can taste the farm on this one, and by that I mean that it both tastes balanced but like grain. I grew up in New Jersey, which contrary to popular belief still has farms in it, and this taste reminds me of walking around when farmers were cutting crops down. A real earthy taste, still sweet on the nose and oat-esque on the finish.

Rye Malt Whiskey

Here’s exactly what I was talking about above. Rye whiskeys are my favorite, especially ones with a bit of spice. While this finishes smooth (without kicking me in the teeth), it doesn’t leave me wanting on the spice. Just before that easy finish, there’s a lovely peppercorn note that gives way to not throwing a tantrum in my mouth (which is what I picture ryes doing when they’re not balanced the way I like). Just lovely. Highly recommend.

Applejack

Okay, so it’s not strictly a whiskey. This liquor made from apples is, in my opinion, closer to its French cousin Calvados, which I believe is technically a brandy. Sometimes I find Applejack too sweet for me, but this one finishes with a sort of pie spice. That really makes it. I also highly recommend the Dutch Tulip cocktail that Coppercraft has on their website—really great, and definitely fits nicely with our State Fair theme this year.

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Pulling It All Together

Okay, so remember I said tasting one distillery let’s you talk about their body of work as a whole? Here are some cool ways of thinking about commonalities as well as differences as you taste through a distillery’s greatest hits.

Going In Blind: pick a host in your group of friends who knows what each liquor is about and have them pour the small tastes before everyone can see the whiskeys. Hide the bottles and line up the glasses in a designated order. The tasters can then taste down the line WITHOUT knowing which whiskey they’re tasting until the end. Not only does that make for a fun reveal scenario, but it wipes out biases you might have (*ahem* my rye bias *ahem*).

The Adjective Exercise: as you taste, write down not just the flavors you’re getting from each whiskey, but the adjectives that can also describe them. Earthy, smooth, fire-esque — go bananas. Challenge yourself to use adjectives you never thought you’d use with food. When you’re done, see which adjectives you’ve used more times than others. Do you think these adjectives describe the distillery as a whole?

Are You Related?: if the adjectives don’t suit you, make a family tree. Which whiskeys are close sisters? Which is the big mamma of the bunch? Is there one that doesn’t taste like it belongs with the set at all?

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For more information on the mechanics of tasting whiskey, please visit:

• How to Drink: Whiskey
• Liquor On The Mountain: We’re Having a Whiskey Tasting And You Should Too
• Liquor on the Mountain: Taste These Whiskeys!
• Liquor on the Mountain: Our Whiskey Tasting Line Up

If whiskey’s not your thing and you’re not quite sure how you got here, I highly recommend this.

All images are courtesy of Coppercraft’s website.

Rebel Girls: It’s Time For Queer Herstory Trivia Night!

feature image via Mashable

Time for a pop quiz! JK, it’s more like trivia night. (I would never do that to you, dude.)

I’ve been working with a team of queer feminists you may know from the website Autostraddle dot com to put together a Queer Herstory Trivia game for A-Camp, but I wouldn’t want to leave any of you out – so here’s a sampling of our questions and links to the answers. See how many you can get right without peeping the sources! Find a source of inner pride! And maybe learn a damn thing.

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Way Back When

Q: Eileen Myles, Shirley Chisholm, and Hillary Clinton have this in common.

Click here for the answer.

Q: Suffragists like Anna Howard Shaw and Lucy Anthony U-Haul’ed before it was cool in what were known as _______________.

Click here for the answer.

Q: This document, penned at the Seneca Falls Convention, basically birthed modern feminism.

Click here for the answer.

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Name That Rebel Girl

Q: Chances are, you were assigned this theorist in school and never understood what she was saying.

Click here for the answer.

Q: This revolutionary activist, writer and academic has a life-long history of fighting for black liberation, prison abolition and gender justice.

Click here for the answer.

Q: This SCOTUS Justice is pretty freaking notorious.

Click here for the answer.

Q: This “bisexual curmudgeon” is the Mother of Pride.

Click here for the answer.

Q: Who is the Autostraddle-named “Patron Saint of Cat Owners?”

Click here for the answer.

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The Personal Is Political

Q: In what year did Oberlin College make history by allowing women admission to their programs?

Click here for the answer.

Q: “Thigh Fencing” was a historical reference to what?

Click here for the answer.

Q: What “illness” gave us Freud – and vibrators?

Click here for the answer.

Q: Joss Whedon advocated two years ago that we drop the term “feminist” and move to ______ instead.

Click here for the answer.

Q: This term describes possibly the central experience of every interaction you’ve ever had with a dude.

Click here for the answer.

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Rebel Girls is a column about women’s studies, the feminist movement, and the historical intersections of both of them. It’s kind of like taking a class, but better – because you don’t have to wear pants. To contact your professor privately, email carmen at autostraddle dot com. Ask questions about the lesson in the comments!

47 Truly Fantastic Ways You Described Yourselves When Registering For A-Camp 2015

It’s that time again — the time of year when I gather four cups of those sweet little figs, a gallon of your least favorite brand of coconut water, a modest stack of shredded Whole Foods make-your-own-burrito forms, a lock of Julia Nunes’ hair, a single serving of Bikini zone, a chunk of astroturf from a homoerotic Olympic event, the eggs you froze to make a baby and, from this magical combination of ingredients, I produce your June A-Camp CABIN ASSIGNMENTS! (ETA: within the next 7-10 days.)

This year, as in last year and the year before, I gave you a chance to describe yourself when you registered so that I could try to put you in a cabin with other humans who are exactly as weird or as interested in Game of Thrones or “cuddles” or whiskey as you are. It’s not a perfect process — and this year we’re throwing in another element to the cabin game that’s made it even more challenging — but I think I get it right about 65% of the time. This year will be no exception. I think most of you will have a very good time.

So, here are some sentences from your descriptions of yourselves, ripped mercilessly out of context and placed here, in this list, for our communal entertainment and delight.

1. A-Camp seems like the perfect place for me because my gaydar sucks and I have a lot of feelings.

2. I’m a true Slytherin, I hate Jessie from Toy Story 2, and I’m a pretty big music nerd.

3. Sam Adams is the only boy who will ever touch my heart.

4. I’m a Latina speaker, educator, and budding therapist who wields words and mink jawbone earrings to strike fear into the hearts of oppressive jerks.

5. I can and often do go on tangents about the models of disease causation and the importance of the biopsychosocial model of health.

6. I’m handy with a hammer, if you know what I mean.

7. I enjoy owls, oxfords, ties, and organizing cupboards and closets. I struggle with washing silverware. FORKS ARE HARD.

8. If I were in roller derby my name would be “Little Susi Bonebreaker.”

9. Last year I saw a HANDLE of Tanqueray Gin at Ralph’s and I’m still hoping its a thing they do.

10. I love M-Rod no matter how many stupid things she says. Grace Jones is my Goddess of worship and Faith Lehane is my patron saint.

11. I am a professional hand talker by day, and a queer space alien cult leader on nights and weekends.

12. I’ve seen Clueless at least a thousand times and can quote pretty much the entire movie. I don’t know what that says about me exactly? Maybe that I love the 90s, hanging with my lady posse, and that I would date my stepbrother (ok, definitely not that last part)?

13. I somewhat resemble the old man from Up in both appearance and temperament.

14. I’m a cross between what a nerd thinks a cool kid is and what a cool kid thinks a nerd is.

15. If sassy bunnies could copulate, I would have exploded into life as the gayest unicorn there ever lived!

16.  I once described my hobbies as drinking, going to the cinema, and drinking in the cinema.

17. I like cheese… and Alycea Arline… and sniffing all the candles in Bath and Body Works.

18. I like knitting, baking, indoor/outdoor gardening, reading, writing, yoga-ing, rock climbing and wine-sipping to a soundtrack of Beyoncé, Andrea Gibson, Prokofiev, Bach, and the original cast of Rent.

19. I come with a legitimate belief that my daily expression of science factoids brings enjoyment to the masses.

20. I am a Comanche/Mexican-American psychology phd student who identifies primarily as Ravenclaw, but with a Slytherin secondary.

21. I’m good at creating Sims households inspired by literary families, my The Sound and the Fury family being my magnum opus.

22. Growing up, I was desperately in love with both Jewel Straite circa “Space Cases” and Jennifer Lopez circa “J to tha L-O!: The Remixes.”

23. I have a huge collection of rubber duckies, and they are the only decorative items in my house.

24. I’m the life of the party when I can be bothered to attend.

25. I like scuba diving and spelunking and am 50 feet tall and have tentacles instead of a mouth. Chthonian!

26. I was on the bear team in Yosemite, so if you need help chasing bears away from trashcans, I can actually claim to be a professional at this task.

27. I dislike feet, most straight cis men, and the texture of bananas.

28. I was left in a bassinet outside the Portland feminist bookstore and raised feral by hipsters and drag queens.

29. I am a frustrated Indiana taxpayer.

30. I get separation anxiety when I’m away from my favorite beanie.

31. I do best around people who are really chill but friendly, which is probably why most of my friends are potheads.

32. I spend a lot of time trying to decide whether I’d be in Hufflepuff or Ravenclaw.

33. I like big, midwestern feelings.

34. I am a dragon. Or a weirdo. Depends on who you ask.

35. I AM AN AGGRESSIVELY SWEET COCONUT WHO MAKES NO SENSE.

36. I would watch Fringe and wonder how Jasika Nicole’s hair could be so perfect. And then I found out how crafty she is and that solidified my love for her. But also I’m excited to meet the other campers.

37. I was a member for a day of the Stockholm Surrealist Group.

38. I’ve been described as “Peter Pan” by some of my favourite people.

39. I have alternative hair, and it has a mind of its own.

40. On my own I have about a half hour of “meeting strangers” material, suitable for all audiences.

41. The last time I camped in a cabin was at methodist summer camp where a room of cishet girls compared nipples while I bit my hand in the corner and avoided eye contact.

42. I imagine A-Camp like The Last Unicorn; after a long stretch of loneliness, I ditch the straight world and I’m united with my magical unicorn sisterhood in an enchanted land.

43. I’ve played bass guitar since middle school and used to enjoy people’s surprise at hearing a mild-mannered half-Asian girl rock out to funk rock. Then I cut my hair and people don’t seem as surprised :(

44. I think I’m pretty outgoing by British standards but maybe only average by American standards.

45. I usually get nervous meeting new people in settings like this so I do a stupid thing where I pretend like I’m too cool for bonding activities and then people think I’m mean so I don’t make any friends and I’m sad about it. THE GOOD THING IS I PLAN TO BE AS UNCOOL AS POSSIBLE AT A-CAMP BECAUSE ENTHUSIASM IS EXTREMELY UNDERRATED.

46. Riese, I hope you are having a really nice day and are not too stressed out about cabin assignments. I’ve sacrificed a chicken to bring good luck to you in this endeavor. Don’t tell the vegans.

47. I can shove my fist into my mouth. No, I can’t. I don’t know why I said that.

 

Campership Alert: One Lucky Mexican@ Gets to Attend A-Camp!

A-Camp is right around the corner, y’all! It’s a little over a month away! Can you believe it? Pretty soon you’ll be on a mountain with 300 queers learning, crafting, dancing, laughing, and having a great time.

For those of you who aren’t signed up for A-Camp already, we have one last campership opportunity for your chance to be on the mountain with us! One generous Mexican queer has donated a campership for a Mexican or Mexican-American queer. She really wanted to go but alas, her visa expired, and she won’t be able to renew it in time for camp. “Since I was planning to go anyway, I can’t think of a better way to be ‘present’ than to sponsor someone who can’t afford it but that would benefit from it, even more-so than myself probably,” she says.

How to Enter

1. Be Mexican or Mexican-American

2. Create an Autostraddle profile if you don’t have one already

3. Answer this question in the comments: What’s the best advice your mom/abuelita/tia/prima gave you? It can be any kind of advice — from funny to super serious.

The only requirement is that you have to not already be signed up for A-Camp. Tuition and shuttles in between LAX and the campground are covered; the winner is responsible only for covering their own travel to LAX and/or to the campground directly.

You have until Tuesday, April 28 to comment! We’ll pick a winner Wednesday, April 29.

UPDATE: Congratulations, Mavi! You’re going to A-Camp. Thanks to everyone who participated!

Campership Alert: OkCupid Is Sending a Lucky Soul to A-Camp and It Could Be You!

It’s crunch time as we prepare for our sixth-ever A-Camp — while you guys are finalizing travel plans and dreaming of Klub Deer, we’re strapping on our headlamps and working hard to make the programming for this camp better than anything we’ve had before! Speaking from personal experience, there really is no other feeling quite like being on Mt. Feelings with hundreds of other queers, exchanging thoughts and ideas with so many other people who get where you’re coming from. While we certainly can’t promise that romance awaits everyone on the mountain, we can say that an awful lot of couples have met at camp — is it something about the altitude, the salad bar, the potential presence of bears? No one knows.

With all of this in mind, we’ve turned to our friends at OkCupid for a pretty badass campership offer. Autostraddle busted out an entire series called “Oh Gay Cupid” a couple of years ago, focusing on the impact online dating can have on our lives and relationships.

OkCupid, as you may know, is generally the raddest of all online dating sites out there right now, and they’ve been pretty awesome at supporting the LGBTQ community — one of the (shockingly) few sites that allows bisexual subscribers to search for both men and women at the same time, and offering an increasing number of options for users to describe their gender and/or sexuality. They also offer users the opportunity to keep themselves from seeing or being seen by straight people, something I wish we all had in real life.

On top of all that, they’re now offering the opportunity for one lucky queer to attend A-Camp for free.

How to Win the OkCupid Campership

To enter to win, we’re looking for all the single potential A-Campers to create a profile on OkCupid and email your username to acamp[at]okcupid[dot]com.

A winner will be selected based on how much effort you put into making your profile uniquely yours! Here’s the criteria:

WRITE YOUR ESSAYS (35%)
The best thing you can do here is be your beautiful, weirdo, unadulterated self. Embrace your quirks, and you’re better off finding the person who will embrace you because of (not in spite of) them.

UPLOAD PHOTOS (35%)
Use your photos to not just show what you look like, but who you are and what makes you special. And captions go a long way towards completing that narrative.

ANSWER MATCH QUESTIONS (30%)
This is what allows us to calculate your match percentage with others. The more you tell us who you’re looking for (and who you are), the better we can match you up.

If you already have an existing OkCupid profile, you can enter as well! It’s about creating a profile and taking the time to make it yours.

What You Get

This contest is for all the single Autostraddlers who are not already signed up for A-Camp. Camp Tuition and shuttle transportation between LAX and the campground are covered; the winner is responsible only for covering their own travel to LAX and/or to the campground directly.

Additionally, the winner has the option of being a special contestant in our revamped queer version of Singled Out, a new activity we’re really excited to bring up the mountain.

Deadline is EOD Monday April 6th

You have until the end of the day THIS MONDAY — April 6th, 2015 — to make your profile and email it to acamp[at]okcupid[dot]com. A winner will be selected and notified on Wednesday April 8th!

Thanks to OkCupid for supporting A-Camp and good luck!

Like OkCupid on Facebook . Follow OkCupid on Twitter

Campership Alert: Sharpe Suiting Wants to Send You to A-Camp This Spring!

A-Camp is steadily approaching, dream weavers. For some that means planning road trips with shiny-faced queers that you haven’t seen since the last time you climbed down the mountain or maybe it’s keeping price alerts for all the airlines that’ll get you on top of Mt. Feelings. That good old Degrassi “Whatever It Takes” mentality has set in and it’s all or nothing.

So let’s cut to it: are you ready for a brand new Campership? The ambitious and talented humans over at Sharpe Suiting have thrown their dapper brims into the ring and are generously offering their assistance to get you to glory aka bring your fine ass to A-Camp tuition-free!

Sharpe Suiting is a custom suit and dress wear company with an intellectual approach and a classic feel. The Los Angeles company surged to attention last year with their very successful Kickstarter campaign for a ready-to-wear line. Since then, they’ve been measuring, suiting, and loving queer and androgynous bodies with gusto and bringing fine masculine-of-center tailoring to the masses.

Meet the team and check them out at the Dapper Q Fashion Show this past December:

All the work that they put into measuring queer bodies has been saved and utilized to create a sweet ass algorithm called “andropometrics” and that’s how Sharpe Suiting will be able to put clothes for our bodies directly into stores in a global ready-to-wear line.

In less than a year of business we have custom-made over 100 suits for a diverse group of clients in our local LGBTQ community, particularly those who identify as butch, androgynous, trans men, genderqueer, tomboys, and anyone who is ‘masculine of center’

One thing at a time though, deep breaths, I know you’re excited! First, let’s go back to that Campership. Sharpe Suiting wants you to look your very best and revel on the mountain. Here’s what you gotta do:

How to Win a Free Trip to A-Camp from Sharpe Suiting:

1. Like Sharpe Suiting on Facebook AND follow Sharpe Suiting on Instagram.
2. Facebook or Instagram a picture of yourself looking SHARP with your number one camping essential. Include the hashtag #CAMPSHARPE and tag ‘Sharpe Suiting’ (Facebook) or @sharpesuiting (Instagram).
3. Feel free to be as funny, clever or practical as you want to be!

You do not need to be a masculine-presenting lady to snap a photo with your most favorite camping essential and enter this contest! The only requirement is that you have to not already be signed up for A-Camp. We look forward to basking in the glory of your submissions! Tuition and shuttles in between LAX and the campground are covered; the winner is responsible only for covering their own travel to LAX and/or to the campground directly.

*DEADLINE EXTENDED*

The deadline has been extended and you now have until the end of the day THIS THURSDAY APRIL 9TH, 2015 to post your entry. The winner will be announced on Friday April 10th! Good luck y’all!