Orientation Camp

"Are you in the group with Fred Alderson and them?" She asked when I told her what school I'd gone to.

"No."

"Hugh Bucking-Smith?"

"No."

Of course I knew those people. I liked neither.

She ended our conversation after that. I had considered lying just to get in with her. On second thought I decided I would've been found out after she messaged them saying she'd met a friend of theirs at uni camp. Lying is only useful if you can make sure you never get caught.

"What's your name? You're not in this cabin, are you?" A handsome guy with olive skin asked me from across the room.

"I'm Nick," I said. "She invited me in." I gestured to Pia. "What's your name?"

They all laughed. "I'm Orson," he smirked, giving Pia a look.

"What cabin are you in?" He asked me.

"Room one."

"The one with all the internationals?"

"Yeah."

He chuckled. "That's tough bro."

"They're not bad." They really weren't. Some of them didn't speak English very well, which only made me like them more.

"Hey you're that guy who was wandering around O-week," another guy with straw-coloured hair said. "Sam said he thought you were lost."

I smiled to neuter the awkwardness. My habit to getting caught looking at strangers had caught up to me. "I wasn't." That was a lie. I was lost.

They all looked confused.

"I'm just gonna go to the loo," I said as I got up and walked to the door.

"Have a good shit mate!" Somebody yelled drunkenly as I left.

I walked hurriedly away from room 5 and back to my own room. It would be better to avoid that group tomorrow, I decided.

In our room, Myo and David and George and Lin were all playing cards. Blackjack, to be specific. I joined in, accepting a beer from Lin. We played countless hands, and every now and again I won. I felt like a loser, sitting here and playing cards with these guys who I had nothing really in common with when everyone else was drinking and talking and making friends and fucking. But this was fun. We gambled and I won a little money. I went to sleep and reassured myself that it was only the first night, tomorrow would be better.

In the morning I woke up and scrolled on my phone under my doona for about forty minutes, pretending to be asleep. Then everybody else started moving and the day began. We migrated down the gravel path to the main hall, dark shadows under our eyes but feeling generally alright. In the hall we ate cereal on the tables. The floor was sticky from all the spilled liquids from the night before. We were informed that it was free time until the afternoon, where we would take part in an event called 'The Fresher Olympics'. A competition of athletic pursuit and valour, Kush proclaimed, and no doubt he would be right.

After breakfast everyone dispersed. Some people went back to their rooms. Others stayed and talked in the main hall. I went down to the tables where a group was playing a game of Never Have I Ever.

"Never have I ever munted in an ambulance," Orson said.

A couple of people drank.

Someone shouted storytime and the people who drank had to tell everybody had tell the story of how they ended up there. One guy drank an entire bottle of whiskey. Another had failed a Centurion. A girl admitted to having too many tequila shots. The people who were playing sat down on the table, but there wasn't enough room for the watchers like me. After twenty minutes of trying to look like I was interested I gave up and headed back to our room.

The guys were gambling again, this time it was Poker. I promptly lost all the previous nights winnings, and announced I was headed to toilet to wallow in pity.

In the block there were two cubicles, and I took the unccupied one.

"Are you gonna cum?" I heard a chick's voice whisper.

"I'm close," breathed a male voice in return.

Christ I am not sticking around for this, I thought and got up and stealthily snuck out of the cubicle. I couldn't even get some bloody peace and quiet for five minutes.

Several hours passed, and I lost more money at Poker. David was cleaning everyone up. Thankfully somebody yelled it was time for the Olympics and we had to stop the slaughter.

Outside on the path Maxwell the American sidled up to us with Joel, one of the third year leaders.

"How are you?" I asked.

"Great. Took a nap and I'm ready to partaaaaayyyyy." He sped up to go and talk to some chick in front of us. What a wanker, I thought.

"The second night of Biz camp is no sleep. We go til sunrise," Joel said excitedly to us.

I'm not gonna make it til sunrise, I thought. I'll probably collapse before then unless someone appears with twenty Redbulls.

"What events are in the Fresher Olympics?" I asked.

"Oh, don't worry, you don't have to do anything you don't want to," he said, like he was speaking to a small child.

When we got there everyone sat around drinking and doing nothing until about 1pm. Hurry up and wait. Then we all marched down in a big group to a nearby oval. People were carrying garbage cans fill of ice and VB and apple cider. It felt like it was forty five degrees. We all sat down on the dying grass as Kush announced we were going to split off into teams and rotate through the various 'activities' of the Fresher Olympics.

"I'm feeling quite athletic," I said to Patty.

"That's good mate," he said. I didn't know what the girls saw in this guy.

There were eight teams and four activities. We would be rotating through each activity with another team competing directly against us. To prepare ourselves we sipped VBs and a couple of guys smoked.

The first activity was a wheelbarrow relay race, with a catch. At the other end of the track, where the person crawling and the person holding their ankles switched positions, they both had to finish a beer before they could start back.

Our team started strong until it was Kelly and I's turn. The way to the beer started easily enough. I held her ankles and accidentally got a look up her shorts as she crawled forward. We reached the destination and grabbed some beers out of the garbage can. I dug a hole with a shotgun tool and we shotgunned our beers. I finished mine very quickly. A few seconds later Kelly was done.

Now it was her turn to hold me. The second I lay on the ground and she picked up my ankles I knew it wasn't going to be good. After half a metre my ankles slipped from her grasp. She slurred an apology or something and we got back going again. Only to slip another metre on. Everyone watching was laughing at our ineptitude, even our own teammates.

Meanwhile my stomach was beginning to feel... not good after sculling the beer then crawling in the wheelbarrow position. We were almost back at our team when I thrust my ankles away from Kelly's grip and vomited on the grass. I could hear cheers as I tried to get all the crap out of my system, of which there thankfully wasn't that much due to the woeful lack of food I had consumed.

We did several other events. I only remembered one of them, where we each had to scull a beer whilst spinning around in a 360. That was tough. Then there was one where we had to pull off an imitation of a sexual act as a group. Ollie suggested a beer bukkake, only with the girls spraying the guys with froth.

The guys got down on our knees as Kelly and Jasmine sprayed us with beers. I was sweating like a barbecued sausage so a cold beer shower felt nice on my increasingly sunburnt skin.

Afterwards I excused myself to go off and piss in the trees. When I came back, our team and the other team in our rotation were all keeled over on the ground. Amir explained to me that this was called white fury. You were supposed to drink a gallon of milk and vomit it back up, where somebody would eat it.

"Mate look," a random guy on the other team called out to me. His friend was slurping up some white vomit on the ground seemingly for the hell of it.

"Very impressive." I tried to clap enthusiastically.

"You want some?" The guy on the ground asked nicely.

"No thanks I already had some," I lied. They had paid money to come here and eat vomit. I left the future CEOs and leaders of the business world and wandered over to the beer pong table. I didn't understand why this vomit-eating was necessary. Surely, I thought, we could just have a good time with good old binge-drinking, not these stupid games.

I wandered back to where my teammates were drinking the milk cartons.

"Come on Nick," Amir said. "Nobody can do it. I saw you vomit last night, so you can do it."

"What do you all have cast-iron stomachs?" I asked, looking at everyone keeled over on the ground. They nodded.

"Fuck it," I said. I didn't want to let the team down.

I picked up a carton of milk and drank for a solid minute. Then I started doing star-jumps, which caused nauseousness pretty quick. I fell to the ground, and pressed with my mouth. A stream of white, chunky liquid came out on the yellow grass.

"Kush, get over here!" Amir yelled.

I waited until Kush came over and then ate up a mouthful. A sensation that cannot be described by anything other than extremely fucking unpleasant washed over my body. The taste was somehow even worse than I thought it would be, not to mention the texture.

More vomit came flying out of my mouth, the once-eaten vomit mixing in with the existing white puddle on the ground. I wasn't drunk enough for this shit. I ate a little more and managed to keep it down.

"Good onya champ!" Kush said, and walked off to see how the team next to us was going.

"You're good at this!" Kelly said.

"Um, thanks," I replied, feeling proud of myself.

After the events had finished, we regathered around the leaders. Apparently some other team had won and would receive a mystery prize that night.

We walked back and gathered in a circle around the tables. Kush told us we would be doing, in our teams, a five minute theatre play that incorporated alcohol in some way. Our team decided on a birthday party gone wrong. We got some free time after that and I was delegated the task of making the 'birthday cake'. I walked into the main hall and grabbed a plastic plate from the kitchen. Then I went back outside and found a garbage bin and luckily there were still full cans of beer in it. I sat down on the grass outside the main hall and began to assemble the beer cans on top of the plate in the formation of a cake. Two guys were sitting near me, talking and watching me.

"What's he doing?" The ugly one with a narrow face asked.

"He's making something for their play," the other one said. He had a beautiful and symmetrical face with pretty high cheekbones and a slight sunburn.

"Oh, of course. Bloody creative of him.'

"He's a quiet genius," the beautiful one joked.

Something rose within me. "It's a beer cake," I said.

"He speaks!"

"He is a genius!"

I concealed my dull anger with a return shot. "Probably better than whatever you blokes are making."

They both laughed.

"Probably." The handsome one said.

"We're gonna just wing it," the ugly one said.

"Sounds great," I said. I got up, leaving the Beauty and the Beast, and walked away.

Dusk was settling in when everyone gathered inside the main hall . Rows of chairs had been set out for the all of us to watch each group's performance. I was feeling quite proud of my beer cake and showed it to the others. They heaped praise upon me.

We sat through some truly awful attempts at theatre. Most of the groups could hardly stand straight, which made it even funnier. Our turn come about quicker than I would have liked, I got up with the others and we stood before everyone. Ollie and Kelly and Patty and Jasmine started acting and I stood behind them, staring dumbly at my creation.

Suddenly there was a loud sound and everyone in my group moved out of my way and I looked out into the audience. People were losing their minds laughing. Everyone took a beer and started sculling them. I fumbled mine and it dropped to the floor, breaking and spilling its foam and froth everywhere. I just sat there while everyone finished and held the plastic plate. We took a bow together and returned to our seats.

Kush got up and declared us the winner of the theatre competition. We all cheered and slapped each other on the back in excitement. I got my due credit for the beer cake.

The prizes were announced. The team that won the Fresher Olympics got a goon bag and so did we for our Shakespearean excellence. After only drinking beer for a day and a half the thought of goon was positively energising.

We gleefully passed around the boxed wine, drinking until it was empty and the tables and chairs had been cleared. Myo grabbed my hand and took me back to the cabin, where everybody was taking their clothes off.

"What the fuck?" I said, a little more loudly than I anticipated.

"Tonight's the underwear party," George said in a tone that implied he was surprised I didn't know already.

"Oh, yeah, of course, right," I said. "I knew that."

They all saw straight through that one. I started laughing, which prompted everyone else to laugh even harder.

After the laughter at my ignorance subsided, I stripped down into my black boxers, keeping my runners on once I saw everyone else had theirs on. We traipsed down the path, stopping to stare drunkenly at two girls I didn't know the names of run down in their own underwear and shoes.

Inside the main hall it was last night come again. A dark mass of sweaty bodies jerking and flinging limbs and hips around in the centre. A few hangers on at the outskirts nursing drinks. A few people making out.

Except this time everyone was even less than the night before. I found it strange. In sober daylight, this would not have been possible. The inhibitions ruled then, but give people the shroud of darkness and alcohol their real natures come out. I thought back to our ancestors, who probably did the same thing minus the alcohol and the underwear. Civilisation seemed to deny what comes naturally to us, I thought.

I stopped my drunken philosophical waffling to notice that a line had formed to the side of the DJ's equipment. On the table in front of the line a bit of cardboard had been propped up with the words BREASTS FOR REQUESTS crudely scrawled in black. I joined the back of the line because I wanted to give everyone a respite from the shitty headbangers the DJ was putting on. If I had to hear Mr Brightside one more damn time...

Other people clearly shared my frustration, as there was a long line of girls waiting to make a request. It occurred to me that I was not a girl and lacked a set of breasts, in fact, I seemed to be rather flat-chested. I decided that I was smart enough to fool the DJ - he was probably so cooked off pills he wouldn't be able to tell the difference between my boobs and a real girl's.

One by one, each girl in front of me talked to the DJ, gave a quick flash, and he duly added a song on the laptop. Eventually it was my turn.

I squeezed my pecs together with my hands creating a hairy line of cleavage. The DJ did not look pleased.

"Mate can you play Baby by Justin Bieber please?" I asked.

"Come on mate, what are you doing?"

"I showed you my boobs. Play the fucking song mate!"

"Go away. I don't wanna see your tits."

"You're a sexist pig!"

I baptised the sign with the remains of my beer, causing the texter ink began to fuzz up.

"You're a bloody wanker!" He yelled at me as I walked away.

People were dancing in their underwear. I saw Chloe from the bus was in the middle, wearing black undies and dancing in a way that threatened to send my blood rushing out of my brain and... somewhere else. She had a couple of dudes trying to no doubt seduce her with some extremely shitty dance moves.

Suddenly somebody crashed into me from behind. It was Caitlin, who was cavorting around like a lunatic. I stumbled forward but regained my footing while she fell over. Being a gentleman, I tried to help her up, but she refused and got up herself.

"Let's go talk outside!" I shouted to her over the music. It could't hurt to try again.

"No!" She replied.

"Let's go play Poker in my cabin!"

"No!" She said.

Leaving the dance floor, I walked outside, grabbing a full can of beer from a table. For some reason I decided to hurl it down into the alley between the main hall and the cabin buildings. It exploded against the wall with a satisfying splash.

I saw a group of people standing around talking at the wooden tables near the lake. Sam was amongst them, which gave me a devious idea. I went back into the hall and grabbed another beer. When I was outside again I shook it up for thirty seconds.

I tossed it in their general direction. It flew through the air and landed on the corner of the table, exploding instantly, showering them in beer and froth. I punched the air with elation.

"Oi!"

They were looking in my direction. I sprinted away, cackling like some sort of evil goblin.

I ran through all the cabins and the trees and the grass until I couldn't hear any voices. I stopped, panting and put my hands on my knees. Then it all came up. I fell to my knees and tried to vomit but nothing came out except drool. The worst feeling. I flopped onto my back and lay there looking at the moon, wondering what it would be like to walk on it.

Voices. To my left, from behind the bushes. My eyes opened and I rolled over onto my stomach. The voices grew more excited and then I heard faint slurping sounds. I crawled over slowly and peered through the bushes.

Harriet and Harry were entwined in each other, rolling around in the dirt like pigs, squealing and oinking in pleasure. Their underwear lay discarded on the ground a couple of metres from their fornication. Then Harry got on top of her and tried to stick it in her, but he couldn't find the hole. Harriet reached down and tried to guide him, but his cock was too flaccid. I heard him curse, and then whisper something to Harriet. He got off her and lay on his back. She squatted over him, thrusting her pale arse into his face. After thirty seconds she began moaning, throwing her head back and gripping his chest. Then an expression of horror came across her face, and she let out an incredible loud fart. She practically shouted I'm sorry! but Harry's cock suddenly stuck up like a rod. She laughed, and began stroking it.

I got up and ran away again, and in what seemed like a second I was on the lake's edge. A group of people stripping off their clothes and going skinny-dipping. I stripped off my underwear, socks and runners and followed them into the water. It was cold but tolerable.

We waded out til it was waist deep and then everyone crouched down so only their heads were visible to keep warm. Then I saw her. Her blonde hair was illuminated by the moonlight and the very bottom hairs of her ponytail touched the water. Her face was soft and smooth and beautiful. I waded over.

"You're Chloe, right?"

"Yeah, you're..."

"Nick. We met on the bus."

"Ohmigosh - I'm so sorry. I should have remembered you!"

"That's okay," I smiled. "I'm a forgettable kinda guy."

She laughed and told me she felt so happy. I was also feeling very happy. We exchanged small talk about the camp before discussing the people who were with us.

"How about that Eric dude - He's so fuckin' wooden!" I exclaimed.

She laughed again.

"Hel-lo nice-to-meet-you I-am-Eric-and-I-am-a-robot," I said with a montone voice.

She laughed even harder. "He keeps trying to talk to me and I'm like - no - just no," She said.

I exaggerated my laugh and threw my head back into the water. I Immediately regretted that decision. I quickly broke the surface and suddenly she was right next to me and leaned in.

Our lips found each others. Hers were soft and warm, and I imagined mine were cold. Nevertheless, she kept kissing me and I kissed back. After a while her tongue slid into my mouth, and I took this as a cue to return the favour. We got sloppy.