My mother, dressed in a black Chanel tweed suit and pearls as if going to a funeral, nudged me in the side. I reluctantly looked at Fräulein Eggar as she continued her Grace Farm propaganda. “Our students are required to put in four hours of work detail every day,” she continued, like a judge sentencing a criminal to death row. “We pride ourselves on a tidy campus and the student body rakes leaves, cleans the lavatories and serves all meals in the dining quarters.” At the word lavatory, my mind started to wander from Grace Farm’s militaristic Maine bucolic blah to my concrete stomping ground on the Upper East Side. I missed my skateboard. I missed my Sour Patch Kids stash. I could hear each Sour Patch Kid wailing in despair for my return.

Fräulein Eggar made an irritating scratchy throat sound (gross) and my mother poked me again. “So Charles Campbell,” Fräulein Eggar demanded, “how do you see yourself benefiting and contributing to the community of Grace Farm?” My mother and father, bookending me across from Fräulein Eggar’s enormous desk—which appeared to be from the 18th century and was so anally organized that I had to clench my fist not to jump on it and break dance until every item was cracked and crushed—glared at me with annoying anticipation. “Um,” I started, “I, like, actually don’t see myself at Grace Farm at all. I’m not really the country type. I hate going to Southampton, unless it’s the summer and I can, like, boogie board.” My father lurched towards me. “Charles. That is exactly the attitude that has gotten you in hot water your whole life.”

Truth be told, my parents had trucked the eight hours to Grace Farm in Hopeville, Maine (population 850; 300 of which were the poor suckers at this “school”), after my latest Barclay report card. “The student continues to question authority,” read my French teacher Monsieur Charriol’s comment. “I am close to giving up on this pupil,” my science teacher, Mrs. Ridgefield, noted. Of course, the fact that my art teacher, the awesome Mr. Severs praised my “extraordinary talent at both drawing and painting and vast knowledge of both modern art and current graffiti artists,” went completely unnoticed. Yet despite six Ds and one F in discipline (I did get an A in art!), Barclay had not given me the boot. Still, my parents felt it necessary to ruin my Saturday with a trip to Grace Farm.

“I want to be good,” I chirped to Fräulein Eggar as she sat with her arms crossed, staring me down. I channeled my best Little Boy Lost expression. “But it’s just that my friends always convince me to do things I shouldn’t.”

“He charges without permission,” my mother announced randomly, interrupting my monologue. “He lied and charged hundreds of dollars to the family’s account at Minnie Albert’s Toys.” Get over it Mom, I thought to myself. After the threat of having me “arrested” turned out to be a total false alarm, my mother closed down her dumb Minnie Albert’s Toys charge account.

“Well,” Fräulein Eggar concluded, standing up abruptly, “we are prepared to have Charles Campbell enrolled at Grace Farm starting Monday.”

“What the F?” I blurted out as I saw my young life flash like a bad movie before my eyes.

The silence in the room that followed was deafening.

Next month: Exiled from the Southampton Bathing Corporation—twice!

illustration by Camille Shimshak

When my successful numbers racket was busted and disbanded in fifth grade at Barclay school, I needed another way to feed my addiction to video games, gummy bears and smoke bombs. After my cool 500 clams a day (fixed lottery drawings and my spinning toy roulette wheel) dried up, I felt like my quaint Upper East Side ‘hood had become my own personal skid row.

I turned my parents' library, lined with my mother’s books on decorating and my father’s leather-bound tomes on subjects like (snooze) the Russian Revolution and novels written in French, into my own X-rated movie theater. On weekends, my parents went to Southampton and I was left with Lourdes, our cook, who thought I was the golden child. I invited a select group of ten classmates to watch The Robin Byrd Show, a cable program where a stoned-looking Robin Byrd interviewed strippers and porn stars before making them dance naked to her theme song. To add even more cash to my porn empire (I used the dining room chairs lined up movie theater style in front of the TV), I sold candy bars and soda (at double mark-up) that I charged to my parents' house account at Zitomer Pharmacy. Lourdes only came in once, proudly holding a tray of her famous chocolate chip cookies. “For your friends, Charlie,” she offered sweetly as I tried to politely nudge her out of the room. I grabbed the tray and announced to my “customers” that each cookie was $1, which was a much better price than Kathleen’s Cookies. The kids gobbled them up and my wallet got fatter. Soon, weekly showings of The Robin Byrd Show grew and grew until kids were sitting cross-legged and crammed in the library. This went on for months.

Then one Sunday around 11 a.m., my mother woke me up having decided to leave the country early. With rage in her blue eyes, she dragged my sleepy head into the library and pointed to the channel and said sternly, “I know exactly what you and your friends were watching last night and your aunt Bitsy told me how to lock that horrific channel.” I immediately responded with, “You’re crazy. I don’t know what you are talking about.”

“Lourdes,” my mother called, “please come in the library. Charlie wants to apologize.” My shoulders slumped. I loved Lourdes and didn’t want her to get in any trouble, ever. “I’m sorry Lourdes,” I said flashing her a smile and my most innocent-looking eyes. “I don’t know anything Mrs. Campbell,” Lourdes told my mother, looking down at her white shoes. “Charlie just watches TV with nice boys.”

“Charlie and his friends are no longer watching TV, Lourdes,” my mother proclaimed. “Charlie will be coming to the country with us every weekend from now on and you can have the weekend to visit your sister in New Jersey,” my mother declared, as if addressing the nation. Lourdes nodded her head and scuttled back to the kitchen. My mother ordered me to go back to my room and “study.” I skulked down the hallway as if marching to the electric chair...

With my porno theater shuttered for good (my mother miraculously did figure out how to lock “that dirty, disgusting channel”), was my reign as the Hugh Hefner of Barclay school kaput? No. And my addiction to sugar and gadgets was getting worse, so overnight I devised a new XXX enterprise to score candy and toys without ever spending a single penny. [end scene]

Charlie Campbell's gambling games. (Camille Shimshak)

“I demand that your son return my wife’s diamond necklace,” shouted Mr. Tomesen as he commanded the front hall of my parent’s apartment on East 72nd Street. My mother and father were mid-dinner party and their guests—which included the flamboyant gay walker and gossip Swizzy Ziegler, rail-thin fashion plate Nony Martin and fashion editor Divina Fields—watched in horror and amusement as Mr. Tomesen tried to shove his way past my father who mumbled and wobbled in his brown suede Belgian slippers.

“I think you’ve made a mistake,” my father replied, and then screamed down the hall, "Charlie Campbell, come here right this instant!”

I was already around the corner listening to every word (I often hid under the dining room table and eavesdropped on the conversation or looked up lady’s skirts).

“Yeah. What? I’m here,” I groaned, entering the front hall and facing Mr. Tomesen whose face rouged from pink to fiery red.

“Young man,” he started, wagging his finger like a billy club, “you have something that does not belong to you and you must return it this second.”

“What the heck is going on?” my father demanded, confused as the dining room fell into silence.

“Listen, I have your son's dumb necklace" I told Mr. Tomesen, rolling my eyes, “and he can get it back when he pays me the $300 he owes me.”

"You will return the necklace now, young man. That necklace is worth a lot more than $300."

Fast-forward and I very, very reluctantly forked over a large sparkly diamond necklace to Mr. Tomesen, who marched out in a serious huff.

Why did Alfie Tomesen, son of Ambassador Alfred Tomesen owe me 300 bucks? Well, in fifth grade at Barclay school, I ran a very successful gambling ring, replete with lottery tickets (instant—I made the scratch off numbers with crayons), a roulette wheel (charged to my parent’s account at Mary Arnold Toys), playing cards and a 6’4” Barclay boy bodyguard/muscleman named Alejandro. Every recess the Barclay middle school, boys would huddle on the stairs where I would hawk daily lottery tickets (always rigged—a friend would win and be paid 20 percent of the winning ticket), run a roulette wheel and card games like blackjack (with Alejandro standing guard). The tools of my trade were shoved into my Barclay blue backpack along with boring textbooks and a black ledger of who owed me what. Most days I raked in around $400. This left the Barclay boys’ blue blazers emptied of their weekly allowances. There were many annoying IOUs, but Alejandro was great at collecting debts and I rewarded him with a small fee. I kept my cash wad rolled up with a rubber band around it and spent it on candy, video games and occasionally a new deck of cards. It was a phenomenon and Barclay’s faculty was clueless—until Mr. Tomesen’s unfriendly face came into the picture, destroying both my fun and my profits. The mini-casino was disbanded (I was put on disciplinary probation, once again) and Mr. Tomesen’s wife got her "precious little necklace" (as I described it) back. But fear not, I soon found a new lucrative way to line my blue blazer with bills.

[END SCENE]

Next month: Little Charlie Campbell and his multi-media pornography empire.