My First Time at a Gay Naked Campground

In 1996, I was twenty-six years old, living in Atlanta, Georgia.

I was in a post-college, waiting-tables-and-trying-to-write-on-the-side phase of life. I contributed a few articles to a local, queer-friendly weekly magazine — short reviews of LGBTQ content in television and film. The only one I remember was about an episode of Party of Five where Neve Campbell’s character, Julia Salinger, shares a romantic kiss with another woman.

It was the kind magazine with a lot of full page club event advertisements with job listings and personals in the back.

There was a section called “Passing Glances” where people would post things like “Cute guy in a Braves T-shirt at the Ainsley Kroger. We reached for the same box of Cheerios. Did you feel a spark too?”

Obviously, this was long before Craigslist or hookup apps.

I used to read those things religiously, hoping I’d recognize myself in one of them.

I never did.

That year, the city of Atlanta was gearing up for the Summer Olympics, and rents skyrocketed. Landlords stopped renewing leases so they could make their apartments available to tourists. The ungodly rates basically forced low rent twentysomethings like myself out of the city.

I spotted a seasonal job listing in the back of the magazine for a “men’s mountain resort.”

It sounded like the perfect summer experience — a few months off the grid surrounded by gay men, getting some action, making some money, and having some place to live for free (that wasn’t at home with my parents). I could come back to Atlanta and find a place in the fall post-Olympics.

I called and talked to the owner, who was looking for someone with Macintosh experience to set up a new computer-based reservation system. He told me if I wanted to come interview, I could also stay a few days for free.

I drove six hours in my twelve-year-old Honda Civic to a place in the literal boondocks with no Yahoo maps to speak of, only directions written on a scrap of envelope that ended with “turn right at the gravel road 2 miles past the truck stop.”

Now, this is where my personal experience got split between Luke and Sawyer’s backstories in Grumpy Bear. Luke was twenty-six-year-old me, in between jobs and a place to live, but the job and the campground itself were more closely aligned with Sawyer’s backstory.

This was long before the campground had twenty-five years to grow and develop.

The lodge itself was nice, but there wasn’t much else. It was pretty fucking rough back then, and a little sketchy. Plans to put in a pool and some cabins were still on the future horizon.

The owner greeted me and conducted the interview — I swear to you — wearing a harness, chaps, his ball stretcher, cock ring, and Prince Albert on full display.

He was actually very sweet and totally lost trying to make sense of his new computer. The “interview” ended up being me teaching him the most basic computer skills.

I could’ve handled the technical part of the job, but the living situation scared the actual fuck out of me. The employee bunkhouse was a semi-renovated barn. A barn, y’all. And the other guys who were already working and living there circled me like the fresh meat that I was.

Soon after I’d crawled into bed, a guest who I’m pretty sure I recognized as a porn star came creeping into the barn for a three-way with a few of the employees.

I wasn’t by any means innocent. I lived in Atlanta. I cruised gay bars regularly. I’d been to sex clubs and orgies.

But I wasn’t prepared to live in one in the middle of nowhere for the next three months, possibly trying to sleep through gang bangs.

I left the next morning in a hurry. I regret to admit that I ghosted the owner regarding the job situation.

I ended up at my parents’ for the summer.

Twenty years later, after having been to some similar campgrounds closer to Atlanta, I moved back to my hometown permanently. I returned to that first resort as a guest, found it transformed for the better, and visited once or twice each season until the COVID pandemic.

When I planned the Bear Camp series, I wanted the recurring cast of characters to be employees for continuity.

But I also wanted to portray the fish-out-of-water experience of a young guy with nowhere else to go coming into this environment for the first time.

Enter Luke Cody in Grumpy Bear.

I talk more about my characters and writing process in a conversation with Kelly Fox on the MM Author Podcast.

Grumpy Bear was LoveBytes Reviews Runner-up for Book of the Year 2021, and also a nominee for Best M/M Romance in Goodreads Members’ Choice Awards 2021.


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Read the Bear Camp series by Slade James.