The Truth About Burning Man
It took me and Richard twelve hours to get from Los Angeles to the Black Rock Desert. Yet somehow, I only remember three of those hours on the drive back home. And to be honest, that about sums up my Burning Man (BM) experience.
[The Burning Man, and Townies]
When I first stepped foot in Black Rock City (BRC) I was greeted by men who made me ride a bell and roll in dirt, topless over-the-hill women, pot-bellied naked old men, a two hour long dust storm and a painstakingly deplorable thought, “This was a big mistake and a whole hell of a lot of money down the drain.” And, indeed, for the first 12 hours it absolutely was.
If you’ve never been in the desert during a dust storm, there is no comprehensible way to fully understand what one is. You have to experience it for yourself. But I’ll try and communicate it the best way I know how. Imagine if you will, standing in the middle of a mound of sawdust with a 5 mile radius. Now, without warning, the sawdust rises to the sky, swarms the oxygen, banishes the sun and begins harshly penetrating your skin, eyes and lungs. This goes on for hours. Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not expecting sympathy, but know that my only preparation for this Hell on Earth was, “A small handkerchief should do the trick.” A small handkerchief will do my ass! Maybe for a dirt devil, but to prepare for these beasts, you need a gas mask and air-tight goggles. All the veterans there had them. But somehow we managed. Somehow we even put up our tent. And then it was over as quickly as it came. The sun came out, the people were still naked and the music was still going. And so were we.
We lay there in our tent recovering and reading the Activities Schedule and Map that was handed to us. At first it was amusing. BRC is set up like a clock and camp sites and streets are located by times. So while trying to figure out the map I looked at an ad, “Hey Richard, they’re giving an erotic massage for men at 4:30.” He’d snatch the booklet and laugh out, “How to Pleasure Yourself at 6:00. Sick.” And then that sour feeling kicked us in the gut all at once. All of these ads were erotic. All of these programs were sexual. Every fucking one of them. Had we been tricked? Had all of our friends jokingly sent us to a middle-aged sex camp as a gag? Was the ‘How to Pleasure Yourself’ program just a bunch of men masturbating together watching porn? What the hell was going on? How did we get tricked into this? We were pissed. But we calmed down and went to investigate for ourself. And yet again we were greeted by middle-aged naked men and women, men wanting us to come into their tents, giant penises on wheels and naked trampolines. We’d been had.
[Center Camp, spiritual dancing]
Then night came. And Black Rock City at night is like nothing else in the world. There are full on night clubs with dance floors, bars, lights, music, cage dancers. It is intense. With a peak of 42,000 people, it is the biggest party in America. The entire city fits within a 10 mile diameter lit by fire torches, flame throwers and glow sticks. If you didn’t wear a glow stick, you were a nobody. But you couldn’t get away with not wearing them for long. Men would fly by on their bikes or crawl out of the shadows and stop you with a disturbing, yet alluring kind of charm. “You’re too dark man. Take this gift. The worst thing in the world is to not be seen. Cover yourself with light and let the world know who you are.”
[Center Camp, festivities]
That’s the other thing about BRC, the bartering system. When we were preparing for BM, we were under the impression that we’d over stock ourselves with supplies to trade. Kind of like, I’ll give you a battery if you give me a shot of Vodka. But it’s not like that at all. The system of bartering honestly is a system of gift giving. You don’t need money in BRC. You can get meals, alcohol, toys, hair-bands, coffee, muffins, hugs and even electroshock therapy in the ass. People at Burning Man love to share all. There’s really something kind of sweet about it. It makes you feel good. Sharing becomes something you want to do and you’re happy to do it. Richard and I had so much stuff we just wanted to give it away to people that didn’t have much. And we did, numerous times: to our neighbor Tyler, to the boys who ran out of toilet paper, etc. That was just the way of it.
We learned the hard way that you need a bike to get the full experience of BM. It’s ten miles from one side to the other. That’s a lot of ground to cover on foot. And there’s a lot you’ll miss if you don’t cover it all. They actually have community bikes to share, but some people were audacious enough to put locks on them instead of returning them. It’s best to bring your own bike. Or snatch the lock off of one of the community ones and claim it as your own. (But that doesn’t fit with the BM lifestyle.) But, I digress, bikes are important. Primarily because we didn’t discover until the last day that there were thousands of people our age dancing to our music during the day, drinking our kind of drinks and with bodies that we actually were attracted to. Problem was, they were all at 2:00 and we were at 7:30. Quite the distance on foot, but well worth the travel. The more you explore, the better Burning Man gets.
[Burning Man Temple]
Our last day took the cake. We finally figured out what BM had to offer. We finally found people we could connect with, girls we were attracted to and music we liked. We saw the art on the other side of camp and we saw an oil derrick explode with over 800 gallons of gasoline. You can imagine the intensity of that, I’m sure. And so we ventured.
The truth is, Burning Man is a different experience for everyone and you will never grasp it until you see it with your own eyes. With that said, I’d love to give an accurate depiction of our final night but, honestly, I can’t remember it. All I know is that we went to visit an Absinthe bar, a guy wanted to spank us and play Operation (I refused, though he was nice), I danced wildly in a cage with four girls for what seemed like an eternity and somehow the sun came up without me realizing that night had even passed. The only thing I remember after that is looking at the back seat of the car and seeing our tent stuffed in trash bags and Richard saying over and over while driving down the highway, “I had to do it. I had to do it man. We had to get out of there.” And that was that.
[Black Rock City, looking in.]
I’m not even sure if he remembered how we got home. And he was driving.