VC REPORTER
PUBLISHED 10/07/04
BURNING WOMAN
BY MOLLY FREEDENBERG
PHOTOS BY JEFF CLARK http://www.jeffclarkphoto.com
I’m on my knees in the dust as my boyfriend liberates a handful of curls from my head with a pair of scissors. Behind me, a wooden structure the size of a bathroom is on fire in a burn barrel. In front of me, two neon-bedecked art cars are parked. A girl in white fake fur gets off one and gives me a bottle of sweet-tasting liquor, then kisses me on the lips. A friend takes photos as another handful of hair leaves my head and joins a pile of dark locks on a nearby chair. I hear the snip snip of the scissors, the oon-cha-oon-cha of the electronic music coming from one of the cars, the laughter and cheering of people watching my first-ever serious haircut. Tears escape my eyes. I take another absurdly large swig of liquor. It’s sometime between midnight and dawn. I’m wearing a leather corset, a velvet jacket and increasingly less hair. Within hours, I will be riding a fire cannon while the sun rises over a desolate desert landscape and my hair, with its 26 years of memories, associations and pain, smolders in a pile on the ground below.
This is Burning Man.
But this is just one moment of Burning Man, and one moment of my experience of it, at that. There are as many descriptions and explanations of this annual event as there are people who attend—and every year, that number grows. Some would call it an art festival, a spiritual retreat, a utopian city, a summer camp for grown-ups. Some take Burning Man very seriously, such as the people who refer to it as “home” and organize events like “Hands Across the Playa.” Others see it as an opportunity to take nothing—including the event itself—seriously, such as those who staged a protest against “Hands Across the Playa” (carrying signs like “Holding Hands is French” and trying to play Red Rover with straight-faced hand-holders). Many maintain a certain ambivalence about the event, going every year but complaining about the price the whole way.
That’s why it’s hard to answer the question: What is Burning Man? And it’s why people will tell you that you can’t understand Burning Man until you’ve been.
But there are certain things I can tell you. The undisputable facts about Burning Man are this: it’s an annual event held in the Black Rock Desert in Nevada (the nearest town is Gerlach, about 100 miles from Reno) during the week encompassing Labor Day. It was started on a beach in San Francisco by Oregon-born Larry Harvey and some friends when they ritualistically burned an effigy of a man. Soon the event grew so large, Harvey & Co. had to find another location: the notoriously uninhabitable dry lakebed referred to as the playa. Every year, a city is erected and then torn down—it’s now reached 30,000 people and, for one week, is the seventh largest city in Nevada.
The idea is radical self-expression. People wear costumes, build crazy art projects and then sometimes burn them, supply themselves with everything they need, and exchange no money except for ice and coffee—the only amenities an American dollar will buy you while there. Vending, advertising and political leafleting are forbidden.
So is making a mess. Signs everywhere remind you to “Leave No Trace.” People carry Altoids tins for their cigarette butts and ashes, and carry their garbage home with them. It’s like Brigadoon: When participants and organizers leave, there is no visible sign that the event ever took place.
Just about everything else about BM is subjective. So what you’re about to read is an account of a week in the life of one particular burner.
IN THE BEGINNING
Though Burning Man officially takes place for a week, it lasts much longer than that for most burners. After that first fateful visit, most people find much of the rest of their year is related to the event. When you get home, there are “decompression” parties where pictures and slides are shown, dust-covered costumes are modeled and people are gently eased back into their “real” lives; then, as Burning Man approaches, there are “recompression” parties, where people can get amped for the upcoming even; and in-between there are camp fundraisers, theme parties and regional events nearly every weekend.
After my first Burning Man, I spent the whole year shopping for costumes, planning dances for performances, learning to spin fire, devising and creating an art project for the outer playa, packing, stocking up on food and meeting with friends about our future camp. This year was different. I wasn’t sure I was even going until early August. I’d started a new job, moved in to a new house, and most importantly, had just entered a beautiful phase of my relationship—a stability I wasn’t sure I wanted to subject to the rigors of Burning Man.
I had no art project planned, no strong investment in my camp, no dances to choreograph. I hadn’t picked up my fire toys in months and hadn’t bought a new costume since Halloween. But I decided that on a personal level, I had to go.
The few days before I left were a frenzy of preparation. I dug my sleeping bag, tent and costumes out of dusty corners. I bought 12 cans of tuna, 12 boxes of Tasty Bites (packaged Indian food from Trader Joe’s), two bottles of Charles Shaw, an entire box of Emergen-C, a container of powdered Gatorade, a camelback water pack, duct tape, beef jerky, salty chips, GORP and a bag full of energy bars.
In the middle of all the preparation, I worked fourteen hour days finishing a project, responded to old emails, and generally made sure I could leave guilt-free. Everything had to be in its place because out on the playa, I wouldn’t be reachable. Nor would I want to be.
SATURDAY
My friend Katie and I left Santa Barbara at 4:00 pm. We took turns driving, stopping near midnight in Berkeley for my college friend, Nathan. There, we strategically repacked the overloaded car, leaving behind three six-packs of Diet Cola, a pair of thigh-high boots, several plastic containers and a headrest from my car. Then we were on the final stretch.
It was still dark when we stopped at the Albertson’s in Reno and spilled out of the car, giddy. A car packed as full as ours, driven by a girl with dreadlocks, was parked in front of us. Soon, a van pulled up and three boys in black gothic-wear tumbled out. We all exchanged knowing smiles. Inside, it was obvious the boxes of water that filled the display-space were for us.
We drove the final three hours with Katie and Nathan sitting on beer cases and water bottles, but no one complained, knowing it was just part of the journey. Getting to Burning Man isn’t supposed to be easy, or everyone would go.
SUNDAY
Soon the sun started to rise and the sagebrush lining the road became sparser. The playa is a true desert: it’s a flat, cracked, dry lakebed stretching infinitely—and identically—in every direction. The ground is beige-white. The sky, though brilliant with colorful sunrises and sunsets, is almost always a monotone grayish-blue.
Nothing lives there. No bugs, no weeds, no trees, no plants are stupid enough to try to exist in the heat and the dust. During Burning Man, there aren’t even dogs—they’re banned because of the extreme conditions. There is nothing alive on the playa except for the people who travel there. It is post-apocalyptic.
We followed orange flags to Will Call.
“Welcome home,” said a greeter at the first gate. He wore a jumpsuit and took sips from a beer (though it was 7am) as he scanned the car for illegal passengers. (For a largely volunteer-based organization, Burning Man is remarkably good at keeping out the riffraff—and kindred spirits who can’t afford the $250 tickets.)
The second greeter asked where we were camped. Clan Destino, we said, referring to a group that started as friends, then became a Burning Man camp, then morphed into a performance troupe, arts collective, party planning company and family. He gave us a map of the city, a guide to the week’s activities, a hug and another “Welcome home.”
The streets of the city were carefully mapped by GPS, camps placed months in advance. Signs on every “block” represented time on a clock (the city radiated in arcs from 2:00 to 10:00, with Center Camp at 6:00 and the Man himself equidistant between 9:00 and 3:00, in the center of a semi-circle).
We finally found Clan Destino at 9:30, almost the end of the city. An impressive bamboo sculpture stood at the front of our camp. Several normal camping tents lined the edge, along with Siobhan’s old-school trailer; two wooden tea houses; and two A-frames built over the beds of pick-up trucks. In the center were two teepees made of canvas and large branches, leading to a three-story-high white-fabric pyramid. Along the other edge, neighboring another camp, was a large truck donated by Hansen’s (on loan to a company employee, the logo blacked out) and the Silverstreak Lounge, an Airstream trailer lined from floor to ceiling with red fake fur.
Then came the greetings—all as though we hadn’t seen each other in years. It’s special to see friends on the playa, even if you just saw them yesterday. It’s like the first hug you give a bride or a graduate after the ceremony, because you know something’s different now. After all, this is a spiritual place.
But it’s also a huge party—and I’ve quietly wondered from the beginning if this can truly be a part of an adult lifestyle. Or if it’s a manifestation of generation-wide (or society-wide) latent adolescence. Does growing up mean growing out of Burning Man? Some burners do have families and real jobs. There are NASA engineers, doctors, lawyers, as well as traveling hippies and Rainbow children and trustafarians and college students on summer break.
But there’s no denying that Burning Man is debaucherous; whether that means staying up all night talking or having casual sex with other men just depends on where your usual boundaries lie. The whole point is unabashed, childlike play. It’s your chance to be the person you always wanted to be, dress the way you want, act the way you want, create the giant playgrounds you dreamed of building in your living room but now have the skill, funding and permission to build. But can you be a grown-up and still build forts?
When I arrived on the playa, though, those doubts slipped away. Contrary to my fears and suspicions, Burning Man was still magic for me.
I worked as much as I could before the sun got too high. Last year I’d slept in my tent, which was a mess of dusty bedclothes and inside-out costumes and during the day became a suffocating oven. This year, I made a bedroom in my boxy Scion (bought with Burning Man in mind), inflating an air mattress, and using safety pins and bungee cords to rig red velvet curtains over the windows that faced the sun.
I set up my tent as my pantry and closet, stacking boxes of food and water on one side and boxes of costumes and warm-weather gear on the other. Soon, I got too tired to work. I found refuge in the white pyramid, which was kept a good 15-to-20 degrees cooler at all times by a swamp cooler (run on melted water from food and drink coolers). Someone made blended vodka and Hansen’s Monster Energy Drink cocktails, which Nathan and I sipped while sitting in overstuffed chairs in front of the fan.
“Burning Man sucks,” I said, the absurdity of being this comfortable in such an uncomfortable place not lost on me.
“Yeah, this is lame,” said Nathan, sipping from his chilly drink while the temperature neared 100 degrees outside.
MONDAY
Nathan spent the morning putting enough lights on the bar car to pass Department of Mutant Vehicles (DMV) inspection—an example of the rules and regulations that have begun to characterize the event as it’s grown. Rumor has it that the event’s first years were so heavy on “radical self-expression” that people brought guns, pets and dangerous art projects—all experienced at your own risk. Several years ago, you could still burn your art right where it stood; now there are designated “burn platforms,” to which all projects must be dragged.
The increasing elements of mainstream culture creeping in to Burning Man are always hard to take. At the same time, Burning Man has also sprouted its own version of “mainstream,” within the subculture’s confines, most notably a Burning Man aesthetic—however paradoxical that sounds.
There are several major categories of Burning Man fashion: Mad Max gothic (leather, lots of buckles and straps, shaved or dreaded hair), some version of hippie (bindi jewels on foreheads, lots of flowing fabric, body painting and bare breasts), a version of the candy raver (clothes and accessories that glow in blacklight, neon colored fake fur hats, glitter on everything), and post-apocalyptic stripper (tiny shorts, shitkicker boots, lingerie, practical hats and goggles).
Each camp also has their own subtle rules: In ours, it was boy shorts, altered/handmade dresses, fishnets, platform boots, bell-bottomed leg warmers and tons of costume make-up for the girls; cowboy hats and 70’s-themed button-up shirts, sarongs, leather Utilikilts and fluffy fake fur coats for the guys.
Last year one friend arrived at her first Burning Man looking aimlessly eclectic; this year she arrived in full-on “Burning Man” regalia, with a head-full of fake dreadlocks made from yarn, a black Utilikilt, white tanktop and big, buckled boots. Though I was pleased to see her finally comfortable as “one of us,” part of me missed her individual style.
“You look great!” my campmates cried. “You’ve lost so much weight!”
Is that still the measure of beauty, I wondered, even out here? Fashion and weight? Were we redefining gender identity, or simply reinforcing it?
On the playa and off, the men of Clan Destino did the hard labor—building the structures, driving the cars, telling others what to do. Meanwhile, the women dressed up, looked pretty, danced sexy and provided the emotional core.
It seemed interesting that in this world where anything goes, where everyone is equal and regular social mores don’t apply, that traditional gender roles still seemed to get played out—and not just in our camp. For the most part, it’s men who carry wood for the effigy of The Man, men who build cars with fire cannons and fight in the Mad Max-themed Thunderdome outside the Death Guild camp. Women wear pasties. They hang provocatively off art cars and graciously accept gifts given more readily to their sex than the other. The men work with their hands; the women work with their bodies.
There are exceptions, of course, and more so here than anywhere else. You won’t be shunned if you reject these roles; and, in fact, Burning Man is more tolerant of gender-bending, alternative lifestyles and general freakishness than any place I’ve ever been. But many people choose to live within social convention, barely masked by iridescent paint and large furry hats. How radical is this really?
A few hours after dark, several of the girls went for a pee break together and took some mushrooms. Then the whole camp clambered onto the bar car to go to a “club” on the other side of the playa (a huge canvas dome with a DJ inside and palm trees “planted” in the dust outside), where there seemed to be an endless supply of bar-scene-type men interested only in cute, half-naked girls and what could be done to get them more naked.
It was too much for me. I started to walk home with Katie and her boyfriend, then realized I didn’t have to go home. Just because I didn’t like the scene I was in didn’t mean I couldn’t find another one.
I start walking alone along the Esplanade, my fur-trimmed velvet coat billowing behind me. People passed by, riding their bikes in groups of two or three or twenty, laughing and talking. I felt outside of it, invisible.
A man on a bike approached me from behind. “I was drawn to talk to you,” he said, and at first I was skeptical, but I let him walk with me, since for some reason I didn’t get the sense that he wanted to have sex with me.
We found our way to a group of couches clustered around a smoldering stove outside a dark camp. The man explained his mission on the playa — to stay sober, provide a secure emotional space for others (a reflection of the Naka-Ima training he’d just gone through).
I told him I was nervous about what it’d be like when my boyfriend arrived. I was afraid I’d lose myself in him, or that I’d lose him. I was afraid we’d break up; and if we did, I was afraid of being alone. “I believe in betrayal and heartbreak,” I told him. “I don’t believe I can be loved.”
He held my hand while I cried, and didn’t let go until I stopped.
We walked towards Center Camp, where he took a photo of me under a giant metal lotus which spat fire, and then we separated. I never saw him again. I still don’t know his name, and I don’t mind.
TUESDAY
Nathan and I went on a search for a friend from college. It’s notoriously hard to find people at Burning Man, even if you know where they’re camped, but we went to the Playa Information tent—where you can register yourself and your location—just in case.
We never found our friend, but in line we ran into another acquaintance, who told us all about the camps we hadn’t seen, including Snuggletown, which advertised all sorts of sex and touching events but apparently was full of desperate middle-aged people you wouldn’t want to touch.
We visited Kevissimo at Foot In A Bucket Camp, where he washed people’s feet, and met up with Finger and Juna, who lived in an all-pink tent.
Later, a friend I’d met at Flipside, a Burning Man spin-off event in Austin, came to visit me at our camp’s bar car. When offered an alcoholic beverage, he declined and I was impressed. Then he put several drops of GHB in his Hansen’s soda and I was a little disappointed; but I realized I shouldn’t have been surprised. He is the man who once said, “If it doesn’t get me high or fuck me, I’m not interested.”
Around sunset, I joined the girls for our nightly ritual: grooming on top of the bar car while drinking Kahlua, vodka and soy milk. We cleaned our feet with baby wipes, slathered them with lotion, put them in fresh socks and replaced our shoes. (The playa dust is hard, and you could walk across it barefoot comfortably—but you shouldn’t, or you’ll get playa foot, a painful condition when your skin dries and then cracks due to the alkali in the dust. Most people wear flip flops with dusty feet, or tennis shoes, hiking boots or platform shoes with socks.)
Then we applied make-up for the night. We talked about what we’d wear later, and how our day was, getting our first buzz of the evening as the sun set over the mountains and the entire playa cheered.
There was a burlesque performance in our camp that night. The circus performances in our camp are always stellar, as the art requires strength, skill, technique and hours of practice. And the dances, though usually thrown together at the last minute, always impress the crowd.
Our camp broke up according to gender after the performance. I don’t know what the boys did, but the girls set off for Paddy’s Mirage, an Irish-style “bar” run by people actually from Ireland, on the other side of the playa.
The wind started blowing before we left, and by the time we were halfway across the playa, we were in the middle of a complete white-out. Dust flew everywhere. All of us wore face masks, goggles and warm coats. We couldn’t see ten feet ahead of us. The only indication of where we were was the neon glow of the Man, and the glow from the few brave souls who were trying to fire dance in the storm.
Siobhan and I walked together, our arms linked and our hands gripping our masks, laughing at our predicament. We both hate being too hot or too cold. We’re both sensitive to the sun, we don’t like being dirty, and neither of us particularly likes wind. But for some reason, we put up with these conditions year after year, and even look forward to them.
WEDNESDAY
Nearly everyone who goes to Burning Man has at least one emotional breakdown. And each person has a different explanation for why it happens. It could be the pure stress of sleep deprivation, dehydration, intense heat, a diet devoid of fresh anything and, for some, the over-consumption of intoxicants. It could also be the effect of watching scantily clad women two sizes smaller than you parade past your boyfriend in an endless stream of glitter and leather and breasts. Or it could be the over-stimulated child syndrome; maybe at Burning Man, we are all just kids who’ve spent too much time at the birthday party without a nap. Eventually, we’re bound to tantrum, whine or just plain collapse.
So it’s been for me every year I’ve gone. Here’s my theory about why it happens:
Burning Man is meant to be a place where we are all free, where everything that keeps us from being our “true” selves in day-to-day life is absent. Which sounds great, and it can be. But that also means everything we use for an excuse for why we’re not happy enough, thin enough, in love enough, or just plain enough also is gone.
On my first day of my first year, before finding the camp I’d driven to meet, I wandered the desert feeling ugly, lonely, thirsty, hungry and in desperate need of a beer. Then I had the sickening realization that my misery was all my own fault. If I couldn’t be happy at Burning Man, the one place where I could shape my own reality, then it must be my own choices, my own neuroses and my own fearful monologues that were holding me back—on and off the playa. The experience was overwhelming, exhausting, and intensely personal and emotional. It seemed no wonder, then, that people often chose to use drugs to escape or cope with the terrifying nature of being faced—perhaps for the first time ever—with themselves.
My second year solidified this theory. I arrived on the playa on Saturday (almost a full week earlier than the year before), and fresh out of a relationship. I also had my art project to construct, and a strict no-drugs policy, which meant I was awake, alert and working during the daytime hours (when my friends were sleeping) and sleeping during the cooler nights (when my friends were partying).
By Wednesday, I was seriously dehydrated and found myself suckling on Gatorade and Emergen-C water in a friend’s tent. I felt better the next day, but was throwing up in the med tent and getting three bags of glucose through an IV by Saturday.
This year, I stacked the odds in my favor: no art project, no dance to choreograph, no camp projects to oversee. I’d gone to therapy the day before my departure, and had bought a camelback, whose water-filled hose rarely ever left my lips. Still, the playa got to me by Wednesday night. It was time for my breakdown.
It just so happened that this was also the biggest night for my camp. The Mutaytor, a percussion band made up of about a zillion musicians and dancers, was using our stage, and before the performance, a burner couple planned to get married. As my camp went about preparing for the event, I got more and more lightheaded and dizzy, until I was afraid I couldn’t make it to my pee-spot behind my car without falling over. I drank water. I drank Gatorade. I ate salty snacks to replace my electrolytes. I ate fatty foods in case I was malnourished. I lay down and waited, but it only got worse.
Soon I was crying. Not just little tears dribbling down my cheeks when some sad thought came into my head, but uncontrollable eye leakage. I didn’t even know why I was crying, but I couldn’t see through the tears. My nose was snotty. My whole head was filled with mucous.
Outside, a thousand people were having fun in my living room, and I couldn’t join in. My body and my heart were telling me they were done, done, done and there was nothing I could do about it.
To make it worse, my boyfriend Jeff, the one person who’d consistently taken care of me at Burning Man, was missing. He’d just arrived and was working on a fire cannon for the Viking ship in another camp. When he finally showed up, hours after he promised, he was too energy-drained to help me—or even to stay. He took off to play with his friends, promising to be back soon, and to sleep with me in my Scion. I felt alone, panicked and pissed off; but I was too sick to react.
Two friends sat with me and helped me sort out the source of my breakdown. Could I really be tired or dehydrated? After all, I’d been drinking so much water I was peeing every half hour, and I was eating salt at every meal. I spent most of the daylight hours resting and so far, I’d been fine.
The only variable that had changed was Jeff had arrived.
Despite my best intentions, I had to admit my focus had changed. From the minute I saw him, I’d stopped thinking about me and my needs and started thinking about him: what he wanted, what he was doing, what he’d think about what I was doing. Physically, I’d followed his lead, walking to several camps (instead of riding the bar car, as I would’ve preferred) and staying out in the sun longer than I otherwise would have. And emotionally, I was expending huge amounts of energy trying to hold back the jealousy, fear of abandonment, insecurity, mistrust in him and in the universe, and the feeling of being trapped that always seemed to surface when we’re on the playa together.
What little energy I had kept afloat with vitamin-infused water was completely drained within twelve hours of seeing the man I was in love with.
My friends held me, let me cry, told me their own stories of losing themselves in relationships. Soon, Katie brought over two trays of Mediterranean food from a nearby camp, which I greedily devoured. Nathan checked in on me regularly, bringing me water and holding my hand.
Without even asking, I was getting my needs met—and by people who didn’t have to meet them (as I thought moms and boyfriends were obligated to do).
I started to feel better.
As my headache subsided and I felt capable of walking upright, I changed clothes and went out to the show. My friends made a place for me on top of the bar car, where I could see the Mutaytor set. I wasn’t feeling 100 percent, and since more than half the crowd seemed to be on some kind of psychotropic drug, I still felt pretty disconnected from the whole scene. But it was a nice change. When I finally went to sleep, I felt calm.
THURSDAY
I woke up Thursday morning alone. At first, I couldn’t decide how to feel about this. I was pleased to have gotten a full night’s sleep, without having to share a too-small mattress with my blanket-hogging boyfriend, but I was also gripped with worry, fear and anger: Where was he? Had he slept somewhere else? With someone else? Had he spent the whole night drinking or doing drugs and breaking our relationship agreements?
I went through my usual morning routine: wash with baby wipes, brush my teeth, cover myself in sunscreen, eat some breakfast.
I watched the front of camp for Jeff’s return, and resisted the urge to ask every person in camp if they’d seen him. And then I made a decision. I needed to get centered. I rode my bike alone across the playa, heading for the Temple of Venus, a camp I’d heard about earlier in the week when a friend said, “If there’s one thing you do at Burning Man, do this.”
Along the way, I saw a man in the road offering a fresh aloe leaf to the cracked and burned skin of a passersby. Vagina Appreciation Camp was on the left hand side, Bad Idea Theater on the right. I saw the book exchange, a mobile playa library parked near a cluster of shaded couches. But I didn’t stop.
At 2:00 and Mercury (the first concentric circle behind the Esplanade), I got off my bike.
A pathway led to a temple with white columns and white billowing fabric, where several women sat around a fountain. There were tents on all sides of the temple.
A woman named Mindy, who wore boy shorts, a camelback, boots and nothing else, greeted me and another newcomer, an older woman with a head full of braids. Mindy explained the camp’s purpose: to serve women’s needs, and teach them how to ask for what they want. The only men in the camp were there to provide services. Each tent catered to a certain set of needs.
In the Psychic tent, there were tarot card and energy readings. In the Emotional, you could get energy and therapy work done. The Spiritual tent was a sanctuary for meditation and prayer, and the Body tent was for massage. And in the back corner was the opaque Sensual tent, where women could choose from a menu of services ranging from kissing and erotic massage to deliberate orgasm (using mostly fingers and sex toys).
“I don’t know anyone here, and I want to get laid,” said the braided woman next to me. Mindy put her name on a list and led her to the Sensual tent. This whole process could have been awkward, but it remarkably was not. Mindy was kind, unflustered and easy to talk to.
I asked for water, which she brought me, and chose the Psychic tent first. Entering, I took off my shoes and joined a short-haired pixie on the floor. Next to us, a woman was doing a reading for someone else.
The pixie lit a fat bundle of sage and passed the smoke over me. Then she asked me to shuffle a deck of cards with prints of butterflies on the back and choose one to help me approach my life with a certain direction.
I chose Kindness.
I was annoyed. I was hoping for strength, or power, or self-love. Kindness, I thought, means I have to do what other people want. I have to do what Jeff wants. The pixie corrected me. It was about approaching all people—myself, most of all—from a place of kindness and love.
I left feeling lighter, and calm.
I crossed to the tent directly opposite, the Emotional tent. There, an older woman led me through a series of therapies intended to help me change my physical experience of painful memories—and therefore my emotional recollection of them. I chose a moment when, as a child, I lay alone in my bed while my pediatrician dad was out on rounds and my stepmom watched scary movies with my brothers. I felt completely alone, terrified, powerless, abandoned and angry, without any way to do anything about it. With the help of this woman, I took the image of the incident, turned it into black and white in my head and sped it up like an old movie. Then I added my favorite scent, freesia, to my experience of the moment. By the end of the session the power and intensity of the image had disspiated. I again felt lighter—and I couldn’t seem to dredge up the same panic, or rage, that the memory of that night used to inspire.
I mounted my bike and headed towards camp—and this is when I saw Jeff. He’d been half an hour behind me all day, looking for me, having been stranded in a friend’s camp the night before.
I was angry, annoyed, relieved and disappointed, but mostly I wanted alone time—I just wanted to eat, write and nap.
Amazingly, there was no crisis. We continued our evening without major conflict. Later, we crawled into bed together, happy and blessedly uncomplicated.
FRIDAY
A beautiful day—sunny, clear and even a little chilly. Jeff and I went for a ride on the Viking ship, a beautiful car my friends spent months designing, building and welding. It had a dragon’s head, a sunken bench area in the back, flat platforms to sit on in the front, a pole in the center (for dancing on or just holding and looking majestic), and a chain running from front to back that was strong enough to hang onto.
Some friends from La Conchita sat in the back eating cucumbers and carrots, which were delectable after days of dried, packaged food. I sat in the front and drank a cold beer.
But soon I tired of the Viking ship. It was too insulated, too predictable. All of my favorite experiences earlier in the week—from running into a mobile bar where blue-painted people poured tequila directly into our mouths, to finding a tent where we could make our own beaded necklaces, to the random encounter with the Naka-Ima boy on the Esplanade—happened out of chance.
Jeff and I got off the car and found our way to Gigsville, a collection of camps mostly from LA, and home to a camp who call themselves Rule Brittania and wear hats that make them look like British gentry in India. They were going to “colonize” other camps, which meant sticking flags in the dust and claiming those areas as part of their “empire.”
I loved the people, and this village. There are two aspects of Burning Man for me: the glamorous, performance-based side involving DJs and drugs and spectacular costumes—the side Clan Destino represents; and the irreverent, absurdist side which doesn’t take anything, including Burning Man, too seriously—like Gigsville.
People in Gigsville are the ones who protested Hands Across the Playa. They also staged the Loud Mime Rampage, where people dressed in striped shirts and berets and ran around the playa screaming, asking for drinks, and getting in people’s faces saying “You’re in a box! You’re in a box! How do you like it?”
I would’ve loved to go out colonizing with them, and in fact considered camping in Gigsville this year to be part of such activities, but I was feeling sick again and took it easy instead. I’d run out of water—a hazard of spending too much time away from camp—and had gotten stuck on the other side of the playa during what I call “Death Time,” the hours between 3pm and sunset when it’s hottest and driest. (I’m convinced this is part of the reason the whole playa cheers at sunset. Not only is it strikingly beautiful, but sunset means those miserable hours of headaches and lethargy are about to be over)
Around sunset, Jeff and I headed back home, ate some dinner, and then got ready for schoolgirl night at one of the other camps. It was freezing cold—the weather is unpredictable on the playa, and can change from boiling hot to raining to major sand storm to 32 degrees with little warning—so I wore pants under my schoolgirl skirt and a puffy down jacket over the whole ensemble.
We headed toward Center Camp, where Jeff bought coffee and a man played “Sweet Child of Mine,” “Low Rider” and “Iron Man” on bagpipes to a crowd of tired revelers splayed on couches.
Then we discovered that “Schoolgirl Night” was just two girls in plaid skirts dancing in cages. So we decided to go look at fire art instead, and spent the rest of the night chasing flames across the playa: a pendulum powered by four fire-spewing rockets at each corner, several large metal sculptures all spinning and burning at once, a fire tornado created by several giant fans.
The playa was alive with lights and music and costumed people in varying degrees of intoxication. And there were more people. Period. The weekenders had arrived and were ready to party. The port-a-potties would be a mess the rest of the event. The streets would be crowded all day and all night. Lines in Center Camp would be longer, and more people in plain clothes would be wandering about. And Burning Man was almost over.
SATURDAY
The day of the burn.
If it weren’t for events like the burn, performances in camp and the arrival of friends, we might never know what day it was on the playa. But Saturday, the night almost everyone at Burning Man gathers to watch the wooden sculpture burn, is the one calendar day everyone is aware of.
We’d completely run out of water, so Jeff went on a search for supplies. He found a camp that had nothing but water and alcohol, but wanted mixers. So we exchanged cartons of Monster energy drinks, Hansen’s smoothies and sodas for jugs of water.
Then we visited a friend’s project called White Noise: a little white house with white walls, white picket fence, a white tree, a white mailbox full of gifts people had left and a white bed and white dresser, a white book with white painted pages and a couple of empty scrapbooks people had written in. “Great place to fuck,” someone had written, “but it’s a little dusty.”
Jeff made Tasty Bites for dinner and put them in cut-off lids from water bottles, then we rode our bikes out to the bar car, where people had already started to gather. We climbed on top of the bar car, all squishing in; some of us on E, some of us not. Down below, a new friend did a disturbingly accurate rendition of MC Hammer’s “2 Legit 2 Quit” dance along with the music from a neighboring art car.
Then the burn finally started. The bottom burned first, then the geodesic dome the man stood on. Finally the fire started licking at the man’s feet. Others grumbled that it wasn’t going as planned, but I liked it. There was this suspense, this question of whether the man would burn or not. The heat of the fire combined with the cool night air made huge dust tornadoes, which spun out towards the crowd of fire dancers and onlookers. Several people broke from the masses and ran through them. Then finally, the flames licked up, the dome collapsed and the man—now burning—fell into the fire.
Thousands of people rushed the man. Now there was just a mob with a subtle circular motion near the center—like any outdoor concert around a mosh pit.
Everyone got off the bar car and said “Happy burn” and “Happy new year.” A friend handed out blow pops. The people on drugs started making plans for the night, debating which DJ would be at which dome. I was impatient and walked out to the sand. Finally, Jeff and I walked back to camp and took a nap on the couch, which I found strangely comforting with everything going on around us. It felt right to be in my clothes, out in the open, not in our “bedroom.” It wasn’t a commitment to be done for the night, but just…napping.
SUNDAY
Jeff woke me before sunrise. He’d borrowed a friend’s golf cart and bundled me onto it with my sleeping bag and fur blanket. My teeth chattered as we drove to the trash fence, an orange plastic fence meant to keep your garbage from leaving the event, that also acts as a boundary. On the other side, three girls in white makeup and black clothes walked arm and arm on the other side. A lone figure danced. A naked man did yoga.
The sun gradually peeked over the distant mountains and bathed the playa in brilliant yellow light. This is what everyone talks about, I thought. I’d never seen sunrise on the playa before, an admission which brings the same reaction at Burning Man as I get when I tell people in the real world I haven’t seen Lord of the Rings. “You what?”
Most people see the sunrise because they’ve stayed up all night on drugs or adrenaline; and I’d stopped doing drugs and started getting enough sleep long before I started going to Burning Man.
A small minority get up early enough to see it; and then there are the crazy health nuts who run naked laps around the perimeter of the trash fence and see it every morning. But nearly everyone acknowledges sunrise on the playa is a special time.
It’s a soft, magical, quiet moment when all the intensity of neon and glitter fades into a calm, natural light. Faces look angelic. Skin glows. The all-nighters who will look aged and sallow by noon somehow still sparkle at sunrise. Jeff and I got into a serious discussion about the meaning of Burning Man, the changes we’d seen over the years, and our ideas of identity with a sweet man dressed in Death Guild black leather and wearing an “INRI” tattoo across his belly.
Later, I visited my Gigsville friends, but they were already breaking things down. I drank a Pabst Blue Ribbon and rode to the Temple of Venus, but they were packing up too. Everything was coming down—and so quickly.
I met Jeff at a camp where a chemistry student from Berkeley made us pineapple and Malibu Rum slushies with liquid nitrogen out of giant tanks. When we returned to camp, lots of our friends had already gone, leaving empty spaces where their tents and cars used to be. Those of us who were left walked to the temple, a quarter-mile long edifice which (along with Center Camp) acted as a book-end for the ashes of what was still a sculpture of a man yesterday. We walked in twos through the dark, occasionally passing a bottle of wine between couples.
In front of the temple, there was a bit of a crowd. Some people with laser pointers turned the temple into their own light show. Otheres were horrified—as though this were like defacing the Vatican. “This is fucking meaningful!” one woman shouted. “Turn off your lasers!” At which point, no one did. Everyone was restless and irreverent.
Many people consider the temple burn more personal than the Man. (Some say the temple is the new Man, just as ‘gay’ is the new ‘black.’) Every year it’s been built, it’s been a delicate, intricate, impressive structure dedicated to a lost friend of the artist. Inside, people can leave notes, trinkets and prayers that will be burned with the rest of the building. Two years ago, after meeting Jeff and knowing I’d be ruining my relationship at home, I scrawled “What have I done?” and “I’m sorry” on a wood block. It’s also where Jeff went, alone, to commemorate the day (always during Burning Man) that his mother died. When the temple burned that year, we both cried.
This year, it wasn’t nearly so personal for me, but it was every bit as beautiful as it had always been. Two bridges stretched towards the center, spanning a quarter mile and converging at a two-story pagoda with a tall spire on top.
The fire started at the bottom and worked its way up (instead of racing in from the sides, as I’d hoped). It was lovely, but slow. I wandered away and found myself at the Chaos bar car. I finished my wine and had the bartender make me a drink (rum and Hansen’s) in my wine bottle. Someone commented on my dark hair, smooth skin and bright eyes. A new guy asked for a drink, then asked if the bartender wanted money.
“Money?” I asked and laughed.
He looked embarrassed. “I know, it’s not about that. But I don’t have anything to give her.”
I explained it’s a gift economy, not a barter economy, and he’d obviously never heard the phrase gift economy. He liked it. He was in a sweatshirt and jeans, and had a bike leaned up against the railing. Later he asked for a cigarette and offered me a dollar, then stopped himself.
MONDAY
It was early morning, still dark, and I didn’t want to go to sleep. Until now, I’d been fine with “missing out” (a.k.a. going to bed even if the world’s best DJ was spinning next door), since I knew there’d be more to see and more time to see it.
That night—or rather, that morning—was different. Suddenly I seemed to be making up for lost time. I drank more than I had all week. When I started to get sleepy, I took measures to stay awake. And I wanted to cut my hair.
Perhaps it was the alcohol. Maybe I was trying to cope with the impending end of what had been my best Burning Man so far. Or maybe I realized that Burning Man, an event that consistently changes people’s lives, redirects their focus and often acts as a catalyst for personal transformation, was the perfect place to take such a step—and I only had a few hours left in which to do it.
The idea wasn’t a new one; I’d been contemplating it for nearly six years. As a kid, I’d hated my frizzy curls. Then, when I learned to love them as a teenager, I began to associate them with femininity and sexuality. In college, I had several boyfriends who were horrified at the thought of me without my trademark long ringlets; and nearly everyone else I’ve ever told about the intended haircut—including my colored, bleached, dreaded and braided Burning Man friends—begged me not to do it.
For those reasons, I was wearing the same hair I’d had while struggling with anorexia as a pre-teen, while surviving my first major heartbreak and while watching my father die. I’d had this hair through drug addiction, years of chronic illness, starting and then leaving college, falling in love and coping with heartbreak yet again. Every day, cutting it seemed harder, and more significant. But of course, that was part of the reason I wanted to cut it: freedom, liberation, growth.
Most of our camp had gone to sleep. Jeff, another friend and I stood around a burn barrel with a group of strangers, watching the flames and basking in the heat made by the destruction of art.
It must be now, I thought.
I went alone to my tent to get some scissors, and had several moments of panic. Is this the right thing to do? I wondered. And the right time to do it? I’d felt sure and excited while near the fire, especially with Jeff next to me, but now… What was I doing?
I talked to people around the circle. One girl with hair like mine said she’d cut hers once, but immediately wished she hadn’t. Another said it’s just hair; and I cut a lock in response, but it felt forced—my own spontaneity, and the permanence of the action, scared me.
I asked others about how short to go, and when I explained what it meant to me—that it was more than just an aesthetic decision—they unanimously agreed I should go very short, if not shaved. Everyone seemed to understand why I needed to do this here and now.
Jeff asked me several times if I was really ready to do this.
I pushed any other doubts away. It felt like standing on the edge of the pool, preparing to jump. If I waited until I was ready, I thought, or tried to go in slow, I’d never make it all the way in. I sensed that once I got past the shock of the cold, I’d be glad to be in the water.
An art car arrived, then another, and people spilled out as I knelt on the ground between them. Jeff stood behind me and began to cut. My eyes were closed. My head grew lighter. I began to cry, then stopped. Jeff asked how short I wanted it and I said really short, then drank more alcohol.
Between snips, Jeff reached down and kissed me. It felt intensely personal, intimate, scary. It was like having him beside me during surgery, or through a life-and-death crisis. I’d never felt closer to him, or more grateful to have him with me.
As the sky grew lighter, we took the shorn locks he’d collected onto one of the art cars. At the trash fence, he finished, then emptied the hair onto the playa, doused it with white gas and drew a line away from the pile with more fuel. He handed the lighter to me.
I thought about all the years, all the experiences, all the limiting notions of who I am that were tied up in those strands of DNA—now separate from me.
I flicked the flint. A flame raced towards the pile. Jeff held me as I cried and watched it burn. It felt like being at my own funeral—or maybe a baptism—and again, I was grateful he was treating the event, and me, with the same solemnity I felt.
We shared a bottle of whiskey—I didn’t want to get sober yet.
Then we returned to the car, where we climbed onto one “wing,” where a giant fire cannon was welded to the car. Above me, the sun was rising. Below me, a small fire smoldered.
I straddled the cannon and let several large bursts of flame go. I felt more sexual than I ever had. And free.
(published in Ventana Monthly Magazine November 2006)
e important than ever.
