For once, Sara is in no mood to talk. In silence, we watch the dancing. I notice the counselors acting as chaperones, making sure no one sneaks away or goes too far. Just like a normal dance. But at the same time, something isn’t right.

A girl counselor dances close to an MR man, rubbing her body against his as she jerks with the beat. Moving with her, he leans into her and reaches out to squeeze her behind. She pulls back, yanks his hand away, and shakes a disapproving finger at him. He drops his arms and his head. That’s okay, I forgive you, she seems to say, and within seconds she’s on him again. But now he keeps his arms down and doesn’t even look at her.

Other counselors are just as bad. A perky girl counselor has set herself on the lap of a CP guy. Moving with the music, she teases at his face with her breasts, coming as close as she can come without actual touching. She must know that the slightest spasm would have him all over her—she must know it takes all his will to maintain that tiny distance between them—but she keeps up the torturous dance. He manages to hold back.

“Sara, why do the coun-se-lors act like that?”

“I wish I knew.” She almost yells over the music. “I try to figure it out, and I keep changing my mind. It’s obvious that something funny is going on. These counselors are mostly kids with pretty conservative morals, and you notice they don’t have public foreplay with one another. Just with us. I don’t get it.” A male counselor is slow-dancing with the blind girl. He hoists her up by her buttocks and wraps her legs around his hips.

The music gets softer, and Sara lowers her voice. “At times I think they don’t know what they’re doing. They think we’re children, or puppies, or sexless beings from outer space. They don’t realize that, whatever else is wrong with us, we all—even the quads and paras and the Butner people who’ve been sterilized—all of us are capable of being aroused. At other times, I think, They have to know! They have to know what they’re doing. It’s so obvious.

“So, then, maybe they do it for the same reason they do almost everything. They think we need it. It’s therapy. Just another facet of the whole Camp Courage mission to provide freaks with ‘normal experiences.’ Now, I’m no judge of Normal, I know, but this don’t look like Normal to me.” She laughs a laugh that leaves me cold.