Boys State, the Subject of an Outstanding New Documentary, Was One of the Strangest Weeks of My Life – Esquire

I got my first hemorrhoid at Boys State. It was the end of my Junior year, and Id been selected to represent my high school at the hallowedalbeit not widely-knownstudent government camp run by the veterans' organization American Legion. There, in a dorm room at Rider University in Central New Jersey, I can recall the hot air from my box fan blowing as I unfurled sheet after sheet of toilet paper, wiping vigorously at an itch that had spread around the diameter of my rear-end like a colony of fire ants. It was the summer of 2008, I was 17, I had been assigned the role of "councilman," and I really had no idea what to do about a hemorrhoid. Id never had one before. But there it was, a confusing little gob of discomfort and irritation that, despite my best efforts, would just not go away. I dont often think about my first hemorrhoid. But like everything about my week at Boys State, its not something Id ever forget.

Boys State is a week-long all-boys politics camp that smacks of old-school, communist-fearing American nationalism. It was founded by the American Legion in 1935 to, as they put it on their website, counter the socialism-inspired Young Pioneer Campschildrens programs in the 1920s and '30s run by Communist-tied groups that taught American kids about, well, Communism. Teaching an alternate form of government to our nations youth wasnt exactly hunky-dory in the Red Scare era. A daughter of one of the founders of Boys State once said in an interview that when her father found out the Young Pioneer Camps were basically the Communists, he got inspired to get the Legion to get involved in a program to teach our government to the students. 85 years later, Boys State is still going strong, with programs in every U.S. State except Hawaii. Take that, Commies.

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Not every Boys State program operates the same way. At the one I attended, eleventh grade boys were chosen to represent NJ high schools at the camp based on their leadership, character, scholarship, loyalty and service in their schools and community. There, students were taught to organize and operate their own state government. You wake up at the crack of dawn to march with your fellow statesmen, sit through long seminars full of patriotic government decorum, vye for fake political seats, debate, legislate. The whole program culminates in the election of a "governor." I spent most of my time wandering around listlessly, playing ultimate frisbee with the other losers, and trying in vain not to embarrass myself in front of the women of the Italian exchange program who were, for some reason, housed on the same campus as us that week. The unofficial instruction was to say Ciao bella when we marched past them.

The program, though not my time in it, is the subject of a documentary from A24 that premiers August 14 on Apple TV+ after winning the U.S. Documentary Competition Grand Jury Prize at Sundance this year. Directed by Jesse Moss and Amanda Baines, the film follows the eventful and at-times melodramatic campaigns of four boys who turn out to be major players in their mock-state government in Texas. The razor-edge campaign film presents an eventful, action-packed version of Boys State that is nothing like what I experienced in 2008. But it nonetheless sent me reeling; I felt a phantom itch of my first hemorrhoid as I watched the loudest, most confident boys in the room rise to prominence while the rest of the mumbling, pimple-faced wimps stood awkwardly in sweat-stained t-shirts on the sidelines.

If Moss and Baines had made this documentary the year I went to Boys State, there's no way I would have been in it: The film only concerns itself with the most successful boys at a Texas camp. Usually in a documentary, this kind of stiltedness in presentation would be a flaw. But the limited perspective in Boys State is actually the films greatest stroke of commentary. By only spending time with the most successful kids on campus, the documentary becomes an incisive microcosm of the American way of law.

What Boys State is about, really, is not just the fact that America is run by boysthat's plain enough to see. Moss and Baines are interested in the kind of boys, specifically, who rise to power and why. I remember them vividly. I remember the chantinghuddles of boys with their arms on each others shoulders, yelling for candidates wed only met a few days prior. I recall impossibly confident speeches, kids on the stump pitching themselves through spittle-covered lips, their cheeks covered in pock-marks and acne, yelling about the tenets of a constitution that, at age 17, I still barely even understood. For these boysthe winners, the boys in the filmBoys State was a place where they really come into their own. For me, Boys State was where I realized the kind of man I never wanted to be.

Courtesy Dom Nero

I always loved my older brothers Boys State shirt. It was a plain white T-shirt with the American Legion Boys State logo on the left breast and a dark blue ring around the collar. Vince used to wear it all the time. Hed have it on above his bathing suit at the boardwalk, or under his Vans track jacket when he came home from dates with his high school girlfriend. I always wanted one for myself. Wearing it wouldnt just prove that Id been selected out of all the guys in my class to represent our high school at some far-off college for a weekbut it would also show that I was as accomplished as my cool older brother. And as the track captain, homecoming champ, and saxophone prodigy, Vince left behind some pretty big Birkenstocks to fill.

I was never a summer camp kid; my older brothers and I rarely ever so much as went on a weekend trip with our friends. In fact, I had a history of calling my mom and asking her to pick me up from sleepovers in the middle of the night. I really had no idea what Boys State wasI just wanted the cool shirt. So you can imagine my surprise when I arrived at the campus to find what resembled a kind of political boot camp for kids who competed in regional debate tournaments. American flags blazed high, there was marching, and the welcome ceremony was full of booming, patriotic decorum. Unlike Vince, who was selected along with a group of his five closest friends, I arrived as one of only two kids chosen from my class. My classmate and I were separated immediately, then placed into rival political parties. We were all sectioned off into little dormitory cities, jostled along by camp counselorsalumni who, for reasons beyond my comprehension, had chosen to volunteer their summers, year after year, to teach state government to teenagers. One of the counselors, at the end of our week there, requested that we roast him. It was strange.

The documentary becomes an incisive microcosm of the American way of law.

After a long first day of orientation seminars and ice breakers, I unpacked the wads of pamphlets about the arduous journey ahead, laying down on the hard blue dorm-issued mattress opposite a boy named Max. I looked out through the cross-slats of my box fan to the field that seemed to stretch on infinitely outside my window in the college dorm. For the first time in my life, far away from my family, friends, and hometown, I was completely alone. All for a damn t-shirt like Vince's.

The kids in the film are in it for way more than a t-shirt. They arrive with strong political convictions, and their week starts on a fever pitchright away, all four students are dead-set on campaigning their way to victory. But they soon find that convictions alone will not bring them gain, at least, not in the two-party system cherished by Boys State. Its going to require a certain amount of selling out, in addition to blind confidence.

Both parties at Boys Statethe Federalists and the Nationalistsstart with no tenets, no platform, only a rulebook inspired by how the real state government parties operate. So its up to the kids to decide their political philosophies. This leaves the young men fighting to the bone over party beliefs that theyd developed only days, or some cases, hours prior. Early on in Boys State we meet Steven Garza, the resolute son of a Mexican immigrant family who seems intent on leading an holistic campaign, and says, Im a Nationalist. What that means yet, I dont know. He goes on to explain that, despite the fact that the party does not yet have a platform, hes already prepared to cast his full support. But at the same time, he continues, theres 600 Nationalists and 600 Federalists. Im going to need some of the Federalist vote. Already, hes willing to drop his convictions to win.

Why? Why sell yourself to a fake government camp where the elected positions have no actual power, where its all just for play? These are kids who already have formidable resumes for their college applications; winning the Governor seat at Boys State isnt going to secure them the spot at Yale. At Boys State, though, its not power, really, that youre trying to gain. The whole thing is a game. And if you choose to play it, you play to win.

According to my profile on the American Legion website, I was designated a Federalist in 2008, something I had such a dim memory of that I had to look it up. To quote Garza, what that meant, I have no idea. I do recall, however, somehow becoming elected "councilman" of my city, and feeling compelled to indulge in some form of political back-patting to help a new friend of mine whod just been elected Police Chief. Im not sure why I did it. But I was initiated in the game at Boys State, and I felt the need to play it.

The whole thing is a game. And if you choose to play it, you play to win.

I dont recall ever attending any "congressional hearings." Perhaps I was too busy guzzling the melted, milky white soft serve from the dining hall which streamed out of the ice cream machine like lukewarm paint thinner. The four young men of Boys State, however, play the game of partisan politics quite well. So well, in fact, that the election in the film ends up being about as exciting and complicated as famous campaign documentaries like The War Room or Primary, both of which seem very influential for Moss and Baines here.

Perhaps youd hope that, given the opportunity, the boys of the next generation would build a more inclusive, more empathetic form of government. In Boys State, at least one of the four main subjects seems totally compelled by that goal. Ren Otero, a Chicago-born teenager and seemingly one of the few Black participants at the entire camp, is first introduced delivering an impressive speech about prison reform at an election for his partys State Chairman position. This young man, in rhetoric alone, seems years ahead of the many manic, over-stimulated teens we meet throughout the film. But while its clear Otero has strong left-leaning motives, the kid is spread thin by the partisan politics of the competition, later saying, [Im] just going to be palatable and congenial to what the body wants. Im going to vote for everything...Im going to keep my job. If its the last thing I do. By the weeks end, Otero is publicly shamed for a political maneuver deemed too partisan by his opponentsnot to mention almost being impeached before facing a wave of racist memes on an Instagram account thats shared and publicized by his rival party.

Otero isnt the only subject in the film whose initial convictions are pulverized by the two-party system, though. We also meet Ben Feinstein, an ambitious self-proclaimed politics junkie and bi-lateral amputee who rushes into the program hungry for the governorship, only to be swayed into taking a lesser role as party chairman. Robert Macgougall is first presented as the farthest-right of the four. But we soon discover that shaggy-haired teen has pro-choice beliefsthis all changes, of course, when Macdougall sees the opportunity of aligning himself with his anti-abortion party. And then theres Garza, who faces a reckoning when his opponents discover a picture of him leading a March for Life rally. He eventually shies away from his morals about gun control, instead adopting a more bi-partisan rhetoric. Go figure.

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Boys State is a tidy narrative. You never see a camera crew on screen, the shots are steady and focused, and the whole thing, at times, seems too good to be true, like it was planned out in a writers room. But I think thats just the point. Moss and Baines didnt capture my experience at Boy State, but they nonetheless presented the feeling of being a useless participant, one of the thousand nameless kids in white t-shirts just watching this surreal Lord of the Flies experiment play out in front of their eyes. Its all therethe flailing for attention, the yelling, the push-up contests, the militaristic flag-waving, the awkward embraces, the sweaty high fives, the arguments with kids youll likely never again see in your life, the longing for companionship with strange young men, many of whom, until this point, have never even left their hometowns.

Whats stuck with me after over ten yearsother than the fact that if you put two box fans next to each other, back to back, they cancel each other out, resulting in an endless vacuum that blows inward and ends up benefitting no oneis the feeling of being different than other men. I think it was the first time I really felt that way, a notion that Ive come to accept as a normal part of my life today. I almost never feel as though I am like other men, especially when Im in large groups of them. I dont think its true; of course everyone feels isolated from time to time, its part of being human. I think Boys State made me feel this way. Not because the boys there alienated me, but because, after suffocating in all the testosterone, perhaps I decided that I did not want to be like them, no way.

By the time my week at Boys State was over, I was so anxious to go home, so deflated by the sleep deprivation and the constant worship of a country that I knew almost nothing about, that I could barely stand up. I remember having a piece of hot dog logged in the back of my throat all day, just feeling it in there for hours and hours during the steaming-hot final ceremonies in the campus gymnasium. I couldve grabbed a tissue, I couldve gone to the bathroom or something. But I was exhausted. And when I finally got out onto the wood chips, out it came. Not through my mouthbut through my nose. The next thing I remember is drifting off to a deep, deep sleep in my parents car on the ride home.

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Boys State, the Subject of an Outstanding New Documentary, Was One of the Strangest Weeks of My Life - Esquire