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Summer Camp Crush
“Swallowtail An all-male leadership retreat exclusive to incoming freshmen at Dawson University”
Chase reads through the pamphlet for what feels like the millionth time. Fresh out of high school, he’s been waiting for this moment for months. He has one goal for the make a close friend.
Arriving at camp, he meets Justin, the emerald-eyed college senior and student body president. He feels a strange pull around the tan-skinned, muscular jock…something he’s never felt around other guys.
After an accident leaves the two of them alone in their cabin, the feeling rapidly escalates. Stripped naked, Chase falls to his hands and knees on the bed. He arches his back, spreads his cheeks, and presents his pure, untouched hole to the older male. Whatever happens next, one thing is
He’ll leave summer camp with a close friend.
A very close friend.
Short story
~8,000 words
***CONTAINS EXPLICIT GAY SEXUAL CONTENT***
Chase reads through the pamphlet for what feels like the millionth time. Fresh out of high school, he’s been waiting for this moment for months. He has one goal for the make a close friend.
Arriving at camp, he meets Justin, the emerald-eyed college senior and student body president. He feels a strange pull around the tan-skinned, muscular jock…something he’s never felt around other guys.
After an accident leaves the two of them alone in their cabin, the feeling rapidly escalates. Stripped naked, Chase falls to his hands and knees on the bed. He arches his back, spreads his cheeks, and presents his pure, untouched hole to the older male. Whatever happens next, one thing is
He’ll leave summer camp with a close friend.
A very close friend.
Short story
~8,000 words
***CONTAINS EXPLICIT GAY SEXUAL CONTENT***
38 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 4, 2022
5 people are currently reading
11 people want to read
About the author
Archer Vale
66 books30 followersI've gone independent! New stories are published exclusively though my website.
https://www.archervale.com/
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 5, 2025
Don't turn me down, go louder / Hittin' notes, 'bout to think I'm in the opera / Need for speed, so we goin' full throttle / And if he ask I'ma let him go harder (Ooh La La – Tinashe).
Hm, what am I doing over here not reading romantasy, you might be asking yourself? Just kidding, I know nobody was, but I'll answer anyway! The truth is that while I've been really enjoying my time reading a lot of the overly complicated, long-form fantasy recently, I figured I should immediately halt all production on that front and start something completely new and different for some reason. To keep things fresh, maybe? I don't know, sometimes when I'm reading something and I'm really loving it, I go out of my way to... stop reading it and pivot into a different thing. No idea why, but it's always nice to have something that's going to be a guaranteed hit for me to fall back on if and when reading gets stale. Well, that's what this book was for me; not the number one hit, but rather a distraction from something great. Okay look, I have two talents; I can read an analogue clock... and I have perfected the art of picking out the exact kind of brain rot entertainment that'll be kind of funny for an hour or so until it completely leaves my brain the next day. And while my innate clock reading skills has helped me in many a pinch before, I've yet to find a proper use for my proclivity towards books that are bound to embarrass me if I ever find myself reading them in public. My Kindle offered a good enough smokescreen, but while reading this I still couldn't help but feel like somebody was breathing down my neck! Sheesh... honestly, I wasn’t sure if I even wanted to write a review for this book because I’m kind of embarrassed to have even read it, let alone having had it on my "to-be-read" for so long. Hence, my overly practiced nonchalant tone and the fact that I've taken on a Victorian prose affectation. It's all an attempt to try to hide the fact that I really only picked this up because the cover is hot. I felt like I'd be judged for being shallow, you know? But then I got to the author’s afterword and they said “Hey, if you read this, leave a review” and I figured, what the hell, why not? Time to get writing! Hey, I’m nothing if not a follower. Just know that I get a little “people call me on the phone, I'm trying to avoid, but can the people on TV see me, or am I just paranoid?” whenever I find myself reading something with a shirtless man on the cover. I’m even fighting the urge to hide away forever as of right now. Yeah so, I'll for sure be keeping Summer Camp Crush a secret between me and my Kindle with the deceptively cute cover (pictured below next to The Lego Jazz Club photo op). Oh yeah, and I guess also the entirety of Goodreads can be in on the secret too. Hey Goodreads, I'm might go ghost after posting this review, I can't lie.
Anyway, you know how whenever I'm writing a review for one of these "shirtless man" books, I always start out by being a Positive Patrick and going all "hey, I wasn't expecting such a sweet romance with a cover like that!" yeah well, I totally thought this book would fall into the same category... but nah, this is very much about a one night stand type of deal. No feelings involved here, and honestly? It was a little refreshing to read something that didn't try to hammer in a overly sappy happy ending. Just because a book is all about the detailing of a summertime hookup without any romance doesn't mean that it's lesser just because there's no John Green level, English 102 ass soliloquies at the end waxing poetic about the nature of love and loss. There's something about these summer stories, man! I'm telling you that even ones that are decidedly "no-strings-attached" non emotional still manage to glean some kind of analysis out of me. Anyway, Summer Camp Crush is a short story about a gay guy named Chase going on a gay camping trip where everybody is hot, buff, and... gay. And after cruising and chasing after every dude in sight for fifteen pages, Chase then ends up doing the grown-up with his hot counselor (I say in a practiced nonchalant tone). Seriously, that’s it. Other than the fact that Chase spends a weird amount of time obsessing over how this other dude (what was his name again? Justin or Jake or something) smells (the prose just reminded me of Mr. Krabs, "A Smelly smell that smells... smelly"), there really wasn’t a need for me to even give a synopsis because there’s really nothing here to talk about at length. Heh… at “length.” If this whole thing basically sounds like a porn intro… then I’ve got some news for you! It's porn. Basically. Does that mean I shouldn't critically analyze this? Probably, but that's never stopped me before! It's always been hard (hehe hard) for me to be able to switch my brain off and simply enjoy things as they are without me pointing out weird plot discrepancies. Like, what kind of camp is this, and how come everyone in this book is built like Thor, the god of Thunder, or why does Chase include "liking video games" several times (in this thirty page story) as one of his hobbies as if that were something unique? I mean, ice breakers are the worst thing ever created, I agree, and people usually try to say they're into things that are generally pretty common so they look totally normal™ to all the new folks, but it would have been nice if he'd at least let us know what kind of stuff he liked, just so he wouldn't feel like such a blank slate character. Also, maybe I just wanted to judge his taste in video games.
Anyway, Summer Camp Crush was light and easy enough to get through in one sitting and that's pretty much what I was looking for, so I can fault this book for being somewhat lacking any real sense of pacing or characterization. Anybody who picked this bad boy up is only here for one reason and I don't want to be that one guy who reminds the teacher that they hadn't yet picked up the homework, so maybe I should stop being such a buzz-kill. Besides, I thought it was funny how the author stated in the afterword that this story was totally a fantasy of theirs conjured up from their own time at camp. That's the beauty of writing, isn't it? You can make things go right. But that's enough musing for one day, now time to turn my chair backwards and get real. Oh yeah, I'm going to get really real! One thing that didn't sit well with me during this book was the fact that the narration took the time to name-drop real life people to give us the skinny on what a few of the hot dudes are supposed to look like, and that made me a little uncomfortable. Not only are real life comparisons one of my biggest pet peeves in literature because it’s pretty weird (boundaries and all that), but I also just think it's kind of lazy. I remember there was this book I read one time that kept referring to the love-interest as “looking like Jason Mamoa” and I thought that this kind of prose showed an baffling lack of imagination. I’ve got to say… it seems like my opinion on the matter hasn’t really changed all that much, because even with this book being as short as it was, I still felt the age old irritations flare right back up. Sure, Summer Camp Crush is hardly Shakespeare, but this is still a book, no? Use your words, descriptive language please! Isn’t that the whole point of this stuff? Well, maybe I’m not being fair though, because this is a very specific kind of story, and I’m well aware that it’s ridiculous that I’m giving this much thought into the whole thing. Besides, as for the Shakespeare comparison? His stuff was pretty horny too, so maybe this book being super horned up isn't such a bad thing after all. I mean, I'm here and I read it. Soo~ooo... How'd I do? Did my lower number of exclamation points than usual do a good job at giving off the impression that I'm super nonchalant? Personally, I was going for "cool as a cucumber." Cool? Cool.
“Something about Justin is magnetic… like he possesses a sort of otherworldly charisma.”
Nah, you just think he’s hot. I mean, you basically said as much.
Hm, what am I doing over here not reading romantasy, you might be asking yourself? Just kidding, I know nobody was, but I'll answer anyway! The truth is that while I've been really enjoying my time reading a lot of the overly complicated, long-form fantasy recently, I figured I should immediately halt all production on that front and start something completely new and different for some reason. To keep things fresh, maybe? I don't know, sometimes when I'm reading something and I'm really loving it, I go out of my way to... stop reading it and pivot into a different thing. No idea why, but it's always nice to have something that's going to be a guaranteed hit for me to fall back on if and when reading gets stale. Well, that's what this book was for me; not the number one hit, but rather a distraction from something great. Okay look, I have two talents; I can read an analogue clock... and I have perfected the art of picking out the exact kind of brain rot entertainment that'll be kind of funny for an hour or so until it completely leaves my brain the next day. And while my innate clock reading skills has helped me in many a pinch before, I've yet to find a proper use for my proclivity towards books that are bound to embarrass me if I ever find myself reading them in public. My Kindle offered a good enough smokescreen, but while reading this I still couldn't help but feel like somebody was breathing down my neck! Sheesh... honestly, I wasn’t sure if I even wanted to write a review for this book because I’m kind of embarrassed to have even read it, let alone having had it on my "to-be-read" for so long. Hence, my overly practiced nonchalant tone and the fact that I've taken on a Victorian prose affectation. It's all an attempt to try to hide the fact that I really only picked this up because the cover is hot. I felt like I'd be judged for being shallow, you know? But then I got to the author’s afterword and they said “Hey, if you read this, leave a review” and I figured, what the hell, why not? Time to get writing! Hey, I’m nothing if not a follower. Just know that I get a little “people call me on the phone, I'm trying to avoid, but can the people on TV see me, or am I just paranoid?” whenever I find myself reading something with a shirtless man on the cover. I’m even fighting the urge to hide away forever as of right now. Yeah so, I'll for sure be keeping Summer Camp Crush a secret between me and my Kindle with the deceptively cute cover (pictured below next to The Lego Jazz Club photo op). Oh yeah, and I guess also the entirety of Goodreads can be in on the secret too. Hey Goodreads, I'm might go ghost after posting this review, I can't lie.
Anyway, you know how whenever I'm writing a review for one of these "shirtless man" books, I always start out by being a Positive Patrick and going all "hey, I wasn't expecting such a sweet romance with a cover like that!" yeah well, I totally thought this book would fall into the same category... but nah, this is very much about a one night stand type of deal. No feelings involved here, and honestly? It was a little refreshing to read something that didn't try to hammer in a overly sappy happy ending. Just because a book is all about the detailing of a summertime hookup without any romance doesn't mean that it's lesser just because there's no John Green level, English 102 ass soliloquies at the end waxing poetic about the nature of love and loss. There's something about these summer stories, man! I'm telling you that even ones that are decidedly "no-strings-attached" non emotional still manage to glean some kind of analysis out of me. Anyway, Summer Camp Crush is a short story about a gay guy named Chase going on a gay camping trip where everybody is hot, buff, and... gay. And after cruising and chasing after every dude in sight for fifteen pages, Chase then ends up doing the grown-up with his hot counselor (I say in a practiced nonchalant tone). Seriously, that’s it. Other than the fact that Chase spends a weird amount of time obsessing over how this other dude (what was his name again? Justin or Jake or something) smells (the prose just reminded me of Mr. Krabs, "A Smelly smell that smells... smelly"), there really wasn’t a need for me to even give a synopsis because there’s really nothing here to talk about at length. Heh… at “length.” If this whole thing basically sounds like a porn intro… then I’ve got some news for you! It's porn. Basically. Does that mean I shouldn't critically analyze this? Probably, but that's never stopped me before! It's always been hard (hehe hard) for me to be able to switch my brain off and simply enjoy things as they are without me pointing out weird plot discrepancies. Like, what kind of camp is this, and how come everyone in this book is built like Thor, the god of Thunder, or why does Chase include "liking video games" several times (in this thirty page story) as one of his hobbies as if that were something unique? I mean, ice breakers are the worst thing ever created, I agree, and people usually try to say they're into things that are generally pretty common so they look totally normal™ to all the new folks, but it would have been nice if he'd at least let us know what kind of stuff he liked, just so he wouldn't feel like such a blank slate character. Also, maybe I just wanted to judge his taste in video games.
Anyway, Summer Camp Crush was light and easy enough to get through in one sitting and that's pretty much what I was looking for, so I can fault this book for being somewhat lacking any real sense of pacing or characterization. Anybody who picked this bad boy up is only here for one reason and I don't want to be that one guy who reminds the teacher that they hadn't yet picked up the homework, so maybe I should stop being such a buzz-kill. Besides, I thought it was funny how the author stated in the afterword that this story was totally a fantasy of theirs conjured up from their own time at camp. That's the beauty of writing, isn't it? You can make things go right. But that's enough musing for one day, now time to turn my chair backwards and get real. Oh yeah, I'm going to get really real! One thing that didn't sit well with me during this book was the fact that the narration took the time to name-drop real life people to give us the skinny on what a few of the hot dudes are supposed to look like, and that made me a little uncomfortable. Not only are real life comparisons one of my biggest pet peeves in literature because it’s pretty weird (boundaries and all that), but I also just think it's kind of lazy. I remember there was this book I read one time that kept referring to the love-interest as “looking like Jason Mamoa” and I thought that this kind of prose showed an baffling lack of imagination. I’ve got to say… it seems like my opinion on the matter hasn’t really changed all that much, because even with this book being as short as it was, I still felt the age old irritations flare right back up. Sure, Summer Camp Crush is hardly Shakespeare, but this is still a book, no? Use your words, descriptive language please! Isn’t that the whole point of this stuff? Well, maybe I’m not being fair though, because this is a very specific kind of story, and I’m well aware that it’s ridiculous that I’m giving this much thought into the whole thing. Besides, as for the Shakespeare comparison? His stuff was pretty horny too, so maybe this book being super horned up isn't such a bad thing after all. I mean, I'm here and I read it. Soo~ooo... How'd I do? Did my lower number of exclamation points than usual do a good job at giving off the impression that I'm super nonchalant? Personally, I was going for "cool as a cucumber." Cool? Cool.
“Something about Justin is magnetic… like he possesses a sort of otherworldly charisma.”
Nah, you just think he’s hot. I mean, you basically said as much.
March 26, 2025
Well written erotica.
March 14, 2025
“Don’t worry—I won’t stop. I’m going to make you mine.”
Chase Sullivan is set to attend Dawson University in the fall.
In the meantime, he’s been invited to an “all-male leadership retreat” at Swallowtail Peak.
Chase loves the outdoors. His favorite interests include hiking, swimming, and video games.
Chase has also recently come to terms with being gay. But he is not out, at least not yet.
Justin is Chase’s team leader at the retreat. The student body president is a mechanical engineering major. He’s also super fine. Dark tan skin, dark brown hair, and startlingly light green eyes.
Immediate fixation on, and attraction to, Justin.
Outdoor fun. A seven-mile hike.
Strong writing. From scenery to atmosphere to teenage emotion to reconciling same-sex attraction, authenticity reigns supreme here.
A sprained ankle leads to extreme closeness with Justin.
I feel a sense of safety and belonging unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. Being this close to a powerful man and feeling him care for me is surreal. It’s like I’m in a dream. I’ve never felt protected like this before.
Private time in the cabin with Justin…
Verbiage, anatomy, physiology, overall sensory experience—from taste to smell—exceptional descriptive detail.
Holy hell, this man can bring the damn heat. 🥵
Nails the HFN.
It’s all bliss. It’s the greatest happiness I’ve ever known.
Chase Sullivan is set to attend Dawson University in the fall.
In the meantime, he’s been invited to an “all-male leadership retreat” at Swallowtail Peak.
Chase loves the outdoors. His favorite interests include hiking, swimming, and video games.
Chase has also recently come to terms with being gay. But he is not out, at least not yet.
Justin is Chase’s team leader at the retreat. The student body president is a mechanical engineering major. He’s also super fine. Dark tan skin, dark brown hair, and startlingly light green eyes.
Immediate fixation on, and attraction to, Justin.
Outdoor fun. A seven-mile hike.
Strong writing. From scenery to atmosphere to teenage emotion to reconciling same-sex attraction, authenticity reigns supreme here.
A sprained ankle leads to extreme closeness with Justin.
I feel a sense of safety and belonging unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. Being this close to a powerful man and feeling him care for me is surreal. It’s like I’m in a dream. I’ve never felt protected like this before.
Private time in the cabin with Justin…
Verbiage, anatomy, physiology, overall sensory experience—from taste to smell—exceptional descriptive detail.
Holy hell, this man can bring the damn heat. 🥵
Nails the HFN.
It’s all bliss. It’s the greatest happiness I’ve ever known.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews