From the NY TIMES to Netflix: Schoolgirl Sleepover Sex Stories (Part 4): Camp Cabins

Lolita (Italian translation)

In Lolita (Vintage Books\Random House, 1991), Lolita confessed to Humbert that she had pre-teen “sapphic diversions” with Elizabeth Talbot - Lolita’s tent-mate at summer camp. Nabokov wrote:

Her astounding tale started with an introductory mention of her tent-mate of the previous summer, at another camp, a “very select” one as she put it. That tent-mate (“quite a derelict character,” “half-crazy,” but a “swell kid”) instructed her in various manipulations. At first, loyal Lo refused to tell me her name.

“Well,” she said. “[...] her name was Elizabeth Talbot, she goes now to a swanky private school, her father is an executive.”

I recalled with a funny pang the frequency with which poor Charlotte [Lolita’s mother] used to introduce into party chat such elegant tidbits as “when my daughter was out hiking last year with the Talbot girl.”

I wanted to know if either mother learned of those sapphic diversions.

“Gosh no,” exhaled limp Lo mimicking dread and relief, pressing a falsely fluttering hand to her chest.

Hence, in addition to bedrooms, hotel rooms, and prep school dorm rooms, schoolgirl sleepover sex happens in camp cabins as well. For example, on the “Postcards from Europe” episode of the Hot Girl Talks podcast (Aug 18, 22 [YouTube]), Carly Weinstein, an influencer with 175K Instagram (IG) followers, informed her co-hosts, Halley Kate (246K IG followers) and Jazmyn “Jaz” Smith (147K IG followers), that part of going to summer camp is seeing “plenty of vaginas” “inside of them” “all sides of them”. Carly,

“If you went to camp, you’d know that you saw plenty of vaginas in a lifetime and probably the inside of them. And probably all sides of them. Because at camp, you just are, like, crazy. It’s just a thing. I don’t know, like, people who went to camp know. Just camp things.”

In “Reality Check From Young Voices”, a chapter in Katie Cappiello and Meg McInerney’s Slut: A Play and Guidebook for Combating Sexism and Sexual Violence (The Feminist Press at CUNY, 2015), 17-year-old Danielle confessed that “lots of sexual firsts” happened at her “typical Jewish summer camp” like the filming (oral) sex tapes. Danielle shared:

“I go to this typical Jewish summer camp, where promiscuous behavior is practically encouraged and cultivated [...] with no parental supervision, there are lots of sexual firsts for everyone [...] There is one girl in particular, Georgia, who is really petite and very pretty [...] Josh and another boy coerced - basically forced - Georgia to give them blow jobs, while others filmed it on their phones.”

In Not That Kind of Girl, Lena Dunham shared that when she was a teen camper, she could not stop staring at her summer camp counselor’s “tits”. Lena wrote:

[...] [I] couldn't stop eyeing everyone else, staring at their round asses as they dressed, the dusky hairs emerging from the bathing suits. “You are so bicurious!” Lena's camp counselor said after she caught Lena: “[...] watching her tits swing as she changed.”

The following summer, then-14-year-old Lena found her “truest love”. “[Johnny] was blond, from South Carolina, and just shy of twenty-two.” In her bunk, Lena fantasized about discarding her: “[...] clothes, approaching Johnny, and letting him put his hands all over [...]” her body.

On the “They’re Just Not That Into You...” episode of the Hot Girls Talk podcast (August 4, 22 [YouTube]), Halley shared with Carly and Jaz: “You can also pop your cherry [i.e., have an orgasm] by riding a fucking horse. One of my friends […] she literally told all of us when we were like 9-years-old, ‘Yeah, I popped my cherry by riding this horse.’”

For The Cut’s 2014 Summer Sex Week feature, Maureen O'Connor posted, in the True Stories section, “10 Awkward, Nostalgic Stories of Summer-Camp Sexual Awakenings” (July 7, 2014). The piece related: “ten people’s most vivid memories of summer-camp sex — and sex gone awry, and confused preteen discoveries, and other strangely nostalgic humiliations.”

In the first memory, “Fake Orgasms Sweep Horse Camp”, readers learned about “horsegasms”, which was when a Camp Rim Rock horseback rider had an orgasm via a horse. The quest to have horsegasms arose after Lauren Petersen, the “alpha girl” of the cabin and a New Yorker, shared with her cabin mates that she was getting: “‘tickling feelings’ while grinding on a Western saddle.” Consequently, Lauren’s cabin mates, including the then-11-year-old storyteller, went on a “craze[d]” quest to have a horsegasm.

When I was 11, there was a fake-orgasm craze at Camp Rim Rock’s horseback riding camp for girls. It started when Lauren Petersen asked if anyone else had “tickling feelings” while grinding on a Western saddle. Lauren was the alpha girl of my cabin. She was cool and tough and came from New York and had a Beastie Boys cassette [...] If Lauren Petersen felt tickles on horses, then feeling tickles on horses was cool. Soon everyone was feeling tickles, or trying to feel them, or faking them. It was like the Salem Witch Trials. I will never say whether my horsegasms were fake.

Cruel Intentions 2: Manchester Prep (2000)

On a related note: On episode 06 of Amazon Prime’s Cruel Intentions (2024), streamers learned from Cece that years before she matriculated at Manchester College, she broke her hymen on a “Gorgeous palomino named Lucky.” Cece’s confession may have been inspired by Cruel Intentions 2: Manchester Prep (2000) where Cherie Claymon, a freshman at Manchester Prep, was forced to have a horsegasm while posting in Central Park, which was all part of a plot by Kathryn, an upperclassman, to turn Cherie into the "premier slut of Manchester Prep." Kathryn commanded Cherie, “Up and down. Back and forth. Faster! Faster!” And Kathryn asked Cherie, “How does that feel?”

In “Sexual Shaving Rituals”, a submitter submitted that, as a form of seduction, she and her then-12-year-old cabin mates used to shave their legs in the open on the campgrounds. But when she was 13, as a form of seduction, a 16-year-old female camp counselor asked the 13-year-old and another camper to shave her vagina. Outside. On the porch of their cabin!

We always shaved our 12-year-old legs outside, where the boys could see, sitting on towels spread over the pavement that connected the girls’ camp to the boys’ camp. When I was 13, my counselor got me and another camper to shave her vag before she met up with her boyfriend. We did it outside on the porch, her lying down and us on either side of her, giggling.

In addition, the teen exhibitionist counselor used to tell sex stories in the cabin. In a bit of S&M, the teen sadist “dared” the girls to put Gold Bond on their vaginas. (One can safely infer that the counselor (regularly) found pleasure in putting Gold Bond on her vagina; hence, the referral.) Although she was straight, the counselor got a “perverse kick out of it”. And after the counselor discovered that the submitter’s “prepubescent tits” were being pawed behind the bunk bed, the counselor gave the camper comforting advice.

She was 16 and told us all her sex stories. She once dared several girls in my bunk to put Gold Bond on our vaginas. It was so cold that it stung, and I experienced a kind of sensitivity generally reserved for varsity S&M games. I think the counselor got a perverse kick out of it, even though she is straight. She is now a wedding planner.

Still, she gave me some good advice: When my prepubescent tits were getting squeezed like tiny stress balls during make-outs behind the bunk, my counselor said I should tell the boys, “Be gentle.”

In “The Girl Who Discovered Orgasms”, in a bit of a sleepover cabin sex plot twist, a submitter admitted that she had sex with the cabin! And, consequently, she had her first orgasm. "

I had my first orgasm at Jewish summer camp, the result of dry-humping against a cabin.

But someone must have seen her “dry-humping against a cabin”. Right? Subsequently, she lost her virginity at camp a few years later, and to commemorate the occasion, she had five orgasms that night, including one in the cabin’s shower.

A few years later, I lost my virginity at a summer camp on a kibbutz. I had sex five times that night, including in the shower, and came every time! Talk about getting off to a good (blessed?) start.

Liara Roux shared in her memoir, Whore of New York: A Confession (Repeater Books, 2021), that while 5th graders, she and the "very beautiful" Melissa had girl-on-girl sex at camp in the woods of the Catskills where they kissed, Liara put her breast in Melissa’s mouth, and Melissa put her finger into Liara. Roux wrote:

One day, when we were walking to whatever activity was next, she asked me if I wanted to skip it [...] As we got further away from the camp, she stepped off the trail. I followed her. We wandered through the trees, and I tripped over a rock hidden under the snow.

We got to a clearing and she plopped on the ground, then started making a snow angel. “What about your pants?” I asked. “Won’t they get wet?” [...] “They already are.” I blushed at the implication. Seeing my flushed face, she stood up, walked to me, and kissed me [...] I couldn’t hold myself back. I kissed her, putting my hands around her neck, pulling her in.

[...] I pressed myself against her and we fell in the snow [...] I rolled on top of her, kissed her again [...] She wiggled, unzipping her coat, unzipping mine, and our hands were on each other’s chests, grasping at softness. I kissed her neck; she moaned and put my breast in her mouth [...] After much maneuvering, she pulled off her glove and stuck her hand down my pants. The chill of her fingertips pressing into me.

We walked back to camp, our faces flushed.

And Lindsay shared with Vera Papisova in the Teen Vogue piece "23 Masturbation Stories: Girls Get Real About Self-Love" (AUGUST 4, 2020), which is a compilation of preteen and teen masturbation stories, that she had a "freaky camp friend" who indulged in self-love. Lindsey enjoyed masturbating at camp too, but she only wished that she had known that, besides her "freaky camp friend", other girls masturbated too. Lindsay shared:

"I wish I knew that other girls masturbate, too! And that no matter what way you do it, it's not weird! Most girls don't open up to their friends about that stuff until college, unless you have the occasional freaky camp friend." - Lindsay

From the NY TIMES to Netflix: Schoolgirl Sleepover Sex Stories (Part 1): Becca Moore, Miley Cyrus, Jessica Simpson and Julia Fox

From the NY TIMES to Netflix: Schoolgirl Sleepover Sex Stories (Part 2): Lola Kirke, Chelsea Handler, and Lena Dunham

From the NY TIMES to Netflix: Schoolgirl Sleepover Sex Stories (Part 3): Restless Virgins | Zoe, Isabel, Annie, and Whitney