Sam Ripat slicing up cheese so little

 One of the things I will think about and probably talk about on my death bed, when I have dementia, and remember nothing else, is Sam Ripat slicing up cheese with a Swiss-Army knife so fine, trying to make shredded cheese without a cheese grater, that one time, camping. I would have been 16. When that comes into my mind like it did just now--cutting up cheese finely for my pita lunch--it comes from a place beyond memory, not just something I remember but something I know.

What I remember about that camping trip, also, is a few things. I think we might have gone to that same site for two years so I might be conflating the memories. I remember a plastic jug of white wine I would throw so high in the air at night we were dancing around and try to catch it. Mostly empty the contents getting all frothy from the motion. I remember some people trying weed for the first time from Sam Ripat's joint and we have a picture of that too, somewhere, on my colour film I think. There's also a picture from Ionas camera I took of myself with the flash on, shirtless, on the dock, being funny I guess, and I remember looking at it a few years ago and noticing that I didn't used to have chest achne which I thought I always had and still have now. Theres also pretty b&w photos I took of us walking around at evening time in high grass near the lake, but those must have been from the other year.

I remember trying to sleep with Anil on a inflatable double mattress, one of those huge thick ones not a camping one, in the centre of our big tent and it deflated. The next year we brought camping mattresses but I was meant to bring one for Sunny and I forgot and we got some pillows and stuff to sleep on at the MCC so Sunny could have my mattress. I remember one time, probably the first year, having some drawn out languid sexual thing with Anil one night and emerging from the tent to the circle of our friends embarrassed, I guess, but not enough to refrain from saying something about "sexy time" in apology, somehow to Lena, who was understanding, but that phrase has also stuck with me, though I hope to have forgotten it by the time I am on my deathbed.