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Tripping, huh? Just wait. Let's move on to Burning Man.
About two days back from LA, I get the call from my friend from school Steve Linde (a fraternity brother, actually). The deal is, his girlfriend and 7 of her friends had already rented a Winnebago to go to Burning Man, but were scared to drive the thing. If I wanted to pilot the Princess, they already had a ticket waiting for me.
As I told my friend Miguel, I'd like to think I was losing my touch if I said no to an offer like that. Plus, after LA, this was just what Jamie needed. I was always kind of dubious about Burning Man-- naked hippies, artificial "communities" bleh. But I have a cool friend Mandy who's something of a BM evangelist, and you know... drugs! What the hell? At the worst, I'd get some chemistry in the desert, which has always been a staple of my sanity.
Just to make things clear for you one last time, I am not a hippy, darlin. I am a hick, a ski bum, possibly a recycler, definitely a stoner, but I have never been a hippy. I have never worn birckenstocks or tevas or tie-dyes. When I go camping, I bring heavy glass bottles of beer and try not to have to walk too far. I eat meat all the time. Guns can be kinda fun. I have always always always hated the Grateful Dead. And so I like acid! It's cause that weak ass disco bathroom powder doesn't give me the intensity I need, okay? (Joke)
I'm from a part of the world where the effects of the sixties have long since made their mark, and become so much a part of the culture that we don't really need to talk about it anymore, so you can't hold that against me. Unless you think being left-wing means being a hippy, I'm just not a hippy, okay? (And anyway, I'm so left-wing, I'm more of whatchya call yer anarchist. Eat or git eaten, I say.) The people you think are hippies are what I call college students. Real hippies drive pre-1980 Harleys, raise pumpkins to sell for Halloween, go to jail a lot, live in A-frame houses in the redwoods and litter.
And this was what was so cool about Burning Man. Most of the people there weren't hippies either. But I'll get to that.
So, I got a ride with Linde's girlfriend out to the Winnebago rental, somewhere out in the North Bay. Hercules I think, one of those I-80 gas station insta-towns that acquired a population of 100,000 commuters two years ago.
I had brought the following contribution to the group's supplies:
1 cooler
2.5 pounds of Price club Salmon (only 9 bucks!)
4 cans of asparagus
60 tortillas
2 rounds of flavorless Mexican cheese
4 beautiful avocados
1 bottle of champagne
1 bottle white wine
1 peach and strawberry pie
I figured why not be classy. Fuck that spaghetti peanut butter crap.
So, we pack the RV and pull onto the hiway. Linde's got the first shift, so I decide it's okay to dip into the keg we have icing in the shower. As long as I pace myself, right?
The group is, what can I say, cool enough. No one on the bus is gonna rock your socks off. They party, but they have jobs. Jane's Addiction is the upper limit, but Tracy Chapman's gonna show up from time to time. They probably think I was kind of a cool snob, but I just couldn't give 'em my all, you know? I spent a good amount of time laughing to myself, because you were there watching, rolling your eyes at me everytime the tamborine and egg-shaker sing-alongs picked up steam. I had to make it clear from the outset that I was not going to play moraccas with them. I'm just not a moraccas-player. I'll hum the bassline to "Lowrider", but I won't play moraccas.
So, we careen over the mountains to Truckee, where my shift begins after a brief fast-food break. Right from the start, I let everyone know where they stand with me by hanging a sharp left that sends everyone's drinks sliding off the table.
"Are you sure you're okay to drive, Jamie?"
"Oh, yeah. So good."
This is the downhill run, so I have no problem gunning our flying house up to 80. Passing sport utility vehicles five at a time. On past Reno, which gets ten seconds of ooohing from the party in back, some of whom are already passed out in the bedroom. On into the black Nevada night. The keg pouring nicely. The CD player, rotating Alice in Chains with Spearhead. Road's all mine. The highway patrol's invisible, as far as I can tell.
I need a cowboy hat. This much, I know for sure. I purposely wait to gas up until we've found one of those truck-stop/amusement park complexes that will undoubtably have diesel engine parts, fishing tackle, and cowboy hats for sale. To my dismay, the cowboy hats are the most expensive items the truck stop sells. Thirty bucks? Come on, now. I find a perfect solution though, (I gotta have a cowboy hat). Steve will buy the hat, and I'll wear it.
We get lost. The turnoff is unmarked and Steve and I are the only ones awake, and he's wasted. We overshoot by 100 miles. This means another gas stop, where we ask the attendant if we can take "this little bitty dotted gray road on the map" that looks like it could take us right there.
"Well," he muses, "I guess that'd do it, but what you gotta understand is there's mining roads criss-crossing all over that one there, an' they all look the same as the main road, with no signs or nothing. You're talking about heading into the most desolate stretch of desert in North America in an RV. I just can't say I'd recommend it."
It still takes Steve and the others ten minutes to convince me not to go for it, but we turn tail and head back down the hiway toward Reno.
We finally get onto the turnoff we need, just as I notice that some hep-cats in a cherry 1971 Malibu have been pacing along with us for a hundred miles. Goin to see the Man, you can just tell.
Once we're onto the back road, I figure fuck it, and start draining beers steadily. This, despite the Nevada Highway Patrol staging regular speed traps all along the way. Poor spread-eagled suckers propping up their own jam-packed pickups, blinking into the flashlights as their pockets get pulled out. I figure we have so many places to hide our drugs they wouldn't want to waste their time.
Steve is smashed, and I have to pee. Everyone else is asleep. This is what cruise control is for. I make him hold the wheel while I hit the toilet. When I get back, he is going a conspicuous 50 miles per hour with one hand covering his right eye so he doesn't have to decide between the twin sets of yellow lines he can't quite bring into focus.
I take the helm and bring us back up to a much safer 70 m.p.h. and steer us straight into the moonlight.
We start pulling along a mountain range with a vast expanse of flatness to our right. We're getting close, and I realize what we need now. We need the back of the bus to wake the fuck up. We need Nancy's Vinyl.
I cue up the Jackson 5, and twist the volume knob mercilessly. When everyone has finished blinking and moaning and saying "Okay! We're up, Jamie!", I see lights. A guy with a flashlight waving us off the road.
"How was your drive from San Francisco?" he grins smugly.
"Pretty good, man, want a beer?"
"Sure. You got your tickets? You got water? Okay good. This is what you do. Drive twelve miles that way," he points into the night, "and then take a right."
"Thanks man."
We gently bump down onto the desert floor and immediately forget which way he was pointing. The playa is a textbook cracked-mud dry lakebed, an alkalai flat from dinosaur times that is very serious about its flatness. It is perfect. You can feel it. It's laboratory-precise, german-engineered, laser-cut, absolutely horizontal. There will be no discussion. Dust clouds come and go like fog. Our original plan, to follow the tire tracks, gets foiled right about when everyone else with the same plan obviously started to lose faith and began veering every which way. I don't care. I have the pedal on the floor, my hands off the wheel, my head tipped back in a permanent evil maniac's laugh. I can go anywhere, it doesn't matter. I spin the wheel and let the bus take whatever course it feels like. It doesn't matter. There is plenty of room. That's all there is, is plenty of room.
In the distance, we can see trails of dust 5 miles long coming from other converging vehicles like a scene from a Mad Max movie. The craziness has begun.
One of the guys we're with wants to get on the roof. Why the fuck not? He starts banging on the ceiling and howling at the horizon and we see that the sun's coming up. Could we have timed this better?
"Are You Experienced" starts playing just to prove my point. Louder! Faster! Someone get me another beer?
We have no idea which way to go. There are tracks everywhere, and the clouds of dust are confusing. When they clear momentarily, we think we see lights, and head that way. A blue light. A blue light on a pole or something. A big blue light on a cross or a ferris wheel or...
It's the Man. It's the Man. We beeline right for him, past thickening rings of campsites, bikers doing donuts in the dust, metal sculptures, fires. He is calling, arms raised in what can only be a signal of triumph and gas-generated power. He is saying, "This! Here! Now!" You could hear the sounds, some real, some hallucinated, that accompany an imperative like this: klaxons, sirens, bagpipes, war chants, horns made from animals, drums. Anything that sounds a single summoning note. Anything that raises hackles. Anything that injects fear into the neck. The kind of sounds that humans make when they are called together around fires. When crowds starts to have that losing control feeling. When things start getting burned on purpose. Violence was like a smell in the air that you couldn't get away from. I can still smell it. I'm in love with it.
The Man himself is 30 feet tall, faceless, with a lantern for a head. His limbs have no hands, the arms and legs taper to points. His skeleton is made of neon; clean, straight, simple lines that change from blue to yellow depending on his mood. The ultimate icon. Basically a giant stick-figure representation of man, only somehow with the buzz and hum and tightness of modern man. He is our man, not stolen from some third-world culture. It is primal, but not primitive.
He is in every way a perfect expression of humanity-- this humanity, cool American crazy drug music mankind. Mankind, the animal. Part of what distinguishes man from other creatures is our whole gig with machines-- and The Man is industrial. We also attach importance to form and symbols-- and he is art. We rally in groups (who knows why?) clapping hands to release our spirituality, something that we all understand and none of us can describe-- and The Man is a religion. At least for a California pagan like me it's the closest thing yet to something transcendent that I would want to share with others. (I believe, I believe, in humanity, if nothing else). The Man runs off of stolen energy, flares brightly, dies quickly. As do we, as do we, mama. Shit, fire itself is a man-made invention, and our ability to manipulate destruction is exactly why we are so great, and so evil. And there you have what I think is a pretty fucking cool rendition of the chaos that man thrives on and struggles against. Good enough reason to get all fucked up and wage a riot in the desert.
Because what are we here for? We are here to celebrate ourselves byburning the fucker! Ahh! It's too perfect! Okay, okay, I say to the Man as he glares down at me from on top of his haybale kindling stack. Alright, you got me!
And in case you're wondering, I do mean man, not woman. Say what you want, but no woman would build such a thing just to blow it up. This is about violence and destruction as much as love for humanity. Women are the crucial other side to the event of Burning Man, thank god, but The Man hisself is in every respect a man-made thing.
So, we played around on the Man for a while, then found a campsite. Most everyone there was from San Fran, definitely city people, so what you get is a little "downtown" with a tenderloin center of superfreaks, a little circle of "nicer" freaks around them (SOMA) and then it starts to thin out around the Noe Valley suburbs, where people have big yards, and lots of parking, but kind of a long commute. Then you get people like Dave Eggers, whose campsite was way beyond even "antisocial land".
We set up in the Haight, or maybe the Castro, (we're in a damn RV, okay?) fortunately close to a landmark that everyone knew about called the House of Doors. The House of Doors turns out to be a camp made entirely out of doors, containing stereo equipment set up to produce infinite static distortion feedback loops, strobe lights, persian rugs, and horizontal people on speed staring into the strobe lights for three days.
But it's a landmark, which is important, because you can't find anything without a reference point when it's so flat. It's like being at sea, you have to navigate according to the sun and stars. All you can see is the tents that are immediately around you, and when you walk past that, you have some other tents around you, and pretty soon you have to start loping around in circles like a dog in order to get back home. It's hard to explain, but this flatness played a major role in the whole style of Burning Man. On one level, it "flattened" everyone out, socially. There was absolutely nothing to distinguish someone's place from someone else's, except their personality. You could sit down in the dust just as easily right here as over there, or over there, or ten miles that way.
On the other hand, you get a lot of trippers out of their minds on psychoactive drugs wandering around lost, probably just missing their campsites by twenty feet, or worse, driving cars in the dark with people sitting on the hood. By the end of the show, it became a kind of group joke.
"Do you know where House of Doors is?"
"Ummm maybe over there? Do you know where the Main Road is?"
"Aren't we standing in it?"
"Oh shit, are we? Where's downtown?"
"That way and to the right kinda... Fuck I don't know."
Eventually, people got tired of talking about it and would just shake their heads and let their pupils do the talking. Man.
On arrival, our group started fussing around like a bunch of mommies in an RV, rochambeauxing for the sleeping arrangements, stuffing cabinets, fluffing pillows. I have no patience for shit like that, being a veteran homeless person, so I slung out my bedroll on the desert floor in the shade of the camper with a beer by my head and was asleep in your pajamas before they had their first tooth brushed.
I woke up to a naked girl riding a bike that looked like an aluminum foil dragon, and a guy saying to his friend, "It's like a Rainbow Gathering for bad people..." I had brought the only bicycle on board, (my trusty blue Sears girl-bike). I put on the cowboy hat and went out for a ride. The sun was sharp, but not as hot as everyone seemed to be complaining. I toodled around in just the pajama bottoms among the weirdness for a couple hours. Bitchin cars, still-smoking welded sculptures, cool people with up-to-no-good grins on their faces, scary-cool funky music coming from everywhere, explosions that no one seemed to notice. Industrial noise was the backdrop to the whole event. Lots of nakedness. Dykes, hillbillies, motorheads, artists, DJ's, drug dealers. My people!
In the center of downtown, there's a giant canopy with a coffee shop underneath, a circle of theme tents (Safe Sex, Ninja Jump, etc.) a few kinetic sculptures (bowling ball knockers, straight-up old-school disco ball), naked people, and a persian tea-room/ bar/ junkie den with really good music all the time. And two temporary radio stations.
Okay, so getting to the point here, the "theme" of this years Burning Man was Hell. There was a performance/production/demolition derby scheduled for the evening, and everyone was talking about it. From what people told me, and what I could see for myself from the construction going on, the story is this: Hell has gone bankrupt, so a huge mega corporation called Helco has offered to buy it out. Helco is the parent company of all your favorite stripmall regulars: Starfucks Coffee, Caca Bell, McSinner, Kentucky Fried Children, and Budweiser Beer (the church, not the beverage). So, these Burning Man people (who? who does this?) had built an entire wing of a stripmall out of, you know, wood and stuff, along with a giant paper machee evil Joe Camel, a giant sack of McDonald's fries, and at the center, a three-fucking story office tower with a real neon sign that said "Helco". Every one of these things was stuffed with nice fresh dry hay, so, we all knew what was coming.
Back at the RV, out came the drugs. Okay, now I know you have your theories about drug etiquette, and that's all fine, but I'm sorry, you just have to eat the shit and get on with it. If it makes you happy to talk in code about it, and perform covert transactions in the bathroom, well you're a real fuckin gangster aren't you? But, here we have the opposite end of the spectrum. Seven girls all discussing whether they want to do X and then shroom tomorrow, or just shroom tonight cause Katie's never exed before and Colleen's never shroomed, or just do half a hit and smoke pot, or just smoke pot, or wait till the rave to do the hit, or split the hit and do more later.
"Where's mine?" I say to our X guy (Dave Betters! Your boy from freshman history!)
Glump. There. Let's go watch some shit get fucked up.
After half an hour of waiting for the girls, I must say, they came out of that screen door ready to dance. They all of them had on these little black satin tee-shirts with orange fur sleeves that said "Hot Stuff!" across the front. They were a hit everywhere we went. And I realized that these girls were all closet cool. Troopers. The kind of people who, when it comes down to tripping, you can actually have an okay time with 'em.
So, it got to be night, and we wandered over to Helco where a crowd was forming. Every once in a while, a group would start chanting "Burn it! Burn it!" and then fade out. Okay, so the other feature in this spectacle was these giant tank-tread-with-claws robots that are going to jack shit up and spit fire and crush shit with their robot shark jaws. One of the girls knows the guy who pilots the biggest one, which we have come to call "The Claw", a plainly evil piece of apparatus. We sit down pretty close to the machines, and wait for the destruction.
So, we're sitting maybe ten feet from this one robot, whose dragon-head is pointing right at us, and his operator gets up next to it and starts fiddling around like he's trying to get something to work. We keep hearing bursts of this high-pressure hissing sound, and he's up there with a fucking barbeque lighter going click, click, click. From the sound, it's apparent that if this gas jet does catch fire, the first four rows of spectators are going to get flash-seared to a charcoal crispiness. Everyone starts realizing this at the same time, and a small panic spreads backwards through the crowd. People yelling "Whoa, dude! What the fuck?"
He lets us trample each other for a second, then flips a switch and a nice, controlled little finger of flame sprouts from the beast's throat. He winks once at the crowd and disappears before it even dawns on us that we've just been fucked with.
Some guy bumps into me from behind, and I turn around to see this cat with an ear-to-ear grin and a crazed look in his eye. He laughs and puts his hand on my shoulder as if to say, isn't this the fucking greatest?
"How are you doin, bro?" I laugh at him. I can pretty much tell how he's doing.
"Pretty fucking good, man. I'm on the best acid I've ever done."
"Nice."
"You want some?"
"You got extra?"
"I got two. Here, take them."
"Are you kidding?"
"I'm serious, bro. It's too good to keep all to myself."
"You angel! Where did you come from?"
So this guy just gifts me two tiny little gel caps that look like miniature cloves or something. I'm already starting to feel kinda slippy in the guts. My E's just about takin' hold. Just as I notice it, Dave says, "How you feeling, man?"
"Real good."
"Yeah? I think I got a little something, too. The girls aren't getting much though."
I look over at the girls who are giving each other nervous, "is anything happening" looks. Right about when they turn to ask if I'm feeling it, I start really feeling it.
Eeeeyuh. Oooh, there we go.
I feel bad for them, cause it seems like I got the lucky hit. On the other hand, I didn't split a halfie on a full stomach either, so they can't complain.
Dave is definitely not the kind of guy I want to do drugs with. He's constantly talking about "not losing the feeling", which he has this theory about that if you keep your head bobbing and kind of dance around in place you can keep the feeling. Uck.
But, fair's fair, and I give him the other hit of acid.
My stomach drops another foot, and my skin starts humming. And, guess what, the show's about to begin, and this is gonna be fucking good, isn't it? Suddenly, there are flames spitting out of evil robot machines everywhere, and someone's panting over a PA system, and everyone's standing up and screaming.
And then I see who's moaning on the microphone. Forgive me sweetheart, but I will never ever forget this girl. She was the ultimate dominatrix. She is without a doubt, the hottest thing this world has ever produced. She is so perfect, she must be from Hell. Only Satan himself could afford this girl's services. She is IT. Tall, long blond hair down to a muscular ass, spectacular tits blasting out of a skin-tight red latex devil-suit. An eight-foot pointed tail. She's making the whole crowd nervous, men and women alike (for different reasons), but no one was about to stop watching her.
So she's strutting around in front of the mechanical monsters, which are shivering and jolting around somewhat pathetically.
"You beast!" she teases. "Give it to me! You animal! You monster! Give me all of it!"
The robot raises his metal head to the sky.
"Come on, baby! Do it! Stupid boy! My fuck-machine! You got a big, hot load for me? Yeah? Oh, yes! Yeah, baby!"
The robot shoots 12 feet of fire into the night, then his head folds sadly to the ground.
Unsatisfied, she dips into a toybox, and returns with a 16-inch hydraulic strap-on apparatus with a remote-control button that sends a plunger hissing out and a cute little claw at the end snaps closed.
"Mmmmm. I'm so hungry..." she pouts. "Mmmm, I want something hot, I want something tasty. I want... fries."
She starts mewling like a cat in heat, and walks up to the ten-foot McDonald's fries.
"Mmmmn yeauh! Yeah! I love you McDonald's. I love you, fries! So good!"
She starts fucking the fries.
Hard.
I mean she's really fucking the fries really hard, like, she's fucking the fries for real. She tears gaping holes in the red fries box with the dildoclaw. What can I say? The girl is giving it her all.
"Ummn! Um-um-um-um! Yeah! Aaaowww-uh-uh-uh! I love you, fries!"
The fries are no match for her. Who is?
Then, I don't know, some other shit happened. Robots, smallish blazes. And then a hero-guy (thematically, a representative from Hell-- the good Hell that's getting bought out by bad Helco) climbs the Helco tower with a torch, drops it into the center, and rides a zipline to safety as the whole rig blows up into flames. Fuck yes. Whooo!
Crowd goes wild. Mmmm, fire. Okay, now what? Oh, yeah, the rave.
Now, I've never been to a rave, and historically, I can't stand techno. But if ever there was going to be a time and place for it, this would have to be it. I'll admit it, I was kind of psyched. And, I was also kind of on exstacy, huh huh.
The deal with techno-town is they put it 3 miles away so the people who aren't into it don't have to listen to the thump all night long, which for a lot of reasons, is a really good idea. But it also means you have to make this jihad across the desert to get there. After a brief stop at the RV to pee and drop acid, we hitch a ride on what has become a highway of cars heading out to rave camp, each piloted by looped drivers swerving through dust clouds in the dark. I'm in the passenger seat as we pass a guy on a bike, and he hands me his Jagermeister so he can grab onto the door frame and catch a ride. He hoots at his buddies pumping their nice new mountain bikes as he sails effortlessly by them on his garage-sale beater. He thanks us when he drops off, forgetting his bottle that I've been slugging on, and we are forced to execute this miraculous high-speed bottle hand-off that only two extremely coordinated young men on drugs can perform.
In case you're wondering what your man wears to a rave in the desert, and I know you are, I had on what I'm sure is the stylinest ensemble I have ever thrown together. Check it out. First of all, I was committed to the pajama bottoms for the rest of the trip, that much was certain. With the chunky black Sears oxfords, they become this deluxe Arabian prince in London thing you wouldn't suspect. I thought about wearing the matching pajama top, but it was too tight, and too cute. I needed something a little badder. I settled on the red plaid quilted flannel. A mundane move you say? Ahhh, but with the PJ's-- and the 'stache don't forget-- you get this latino gangster Hefner smoking jacket effect that says, "just because I am comfortable does not mean I am not dangerous". And then, get this, the cowboy hat. Fucking America! I have never looked cooler in my life. I would go to the Academy Awards wearing this getup. You would have thrown yourself at my knees, baby. There was no stopping me.
We pull up to the most appealing of three raves and just stop the car and get out. Plenty of parking. This particular one had this really artful set-up that you just had to be impressed with. The DJ is in the middle, working turntables under a small tower of scaffolding draped with wispy gauze or something, and searing pure blue lights. About 40 feet out, the whole deal is ringed with big ol' speakers evenly placed in a circle, pointing in towards the DJ. Very circular, ovallic, female. But also singular and prime and symmetrical from any way you look at it, which is very Burning Man. Because of the way the desert was, everything was in circles. Any object of interest (downtown, the Man, a DJ, a fire, a fucking light on a stick) anything that was either tall or bright or loud, collected mass around it. But because there are no other reference points to begin from, because everything is exactly as flat and empty as everything else, the mass invariably gravitates equally on all sides.
And yes, I'm tripping by now, but I realize it's true that this desert literally is the biggest, flattest, cleanest, bleached-white canvas in the world. No wonder it attracts so many artists. It's the ultimate live/work space. Where you can finally get all your shit spread out with nothing else before you except what you've brought there, and go, "Whooo. Okay. This is what I wanna try..."
And so here we were standing next to this throbbing blue spark plug, this Frankenstein rivet that had sprouted through the desert floor, with the wind still alternating between cool night air and warm thermals leftover from the day, and swirls of chalky dust hanging just long enough to let you get used to it before a new breeze would clear the whole window again and bring the searing black back all the way up to the stars.
We moved up to the edge formed by the ring of speakers, with that feather soft, gentle tripping curiosity. And we quietly peered in at the weirdos grooving madly inside the blue light. And we looked at each other. And held our breath. And stepped into the sound.
The sound inside was like having sex with a hot engine. It was like applying electricity directly to your heart. This DJ was so fuckin on it, I almost cried. And he would not stop. He never ever ever let you go. Together, him and me, we pounded the fucking playa, baby. Bumped up the desert floor. Un believable. Danced my fool head off, kicking up dust and swinging that hat over my head, snarling like a porn star. So much fuckin fun.
Dave, I discovered, has this hangup about dancing. He's always talking about some "kid" over there who really knows how to dance. He's so insecure about it, I can't even look at him. So sometimes he takes a break and sits there with his raver face-paint and looks pathetic. At one point, I told him I'd just been on a walk over to this stupid little rave-gear shop where they sell glow-sticks and necklaces. He says something about being a glow-stick junkie, so I go pick him up a green one and a blue one, which makes him happier than a kid in a sandbox. The last time I see him, he's making circles with both hands, sitting indian-style by a speaker. To each his own, but that's not how Jamie kicks his drug trips, alright?
We dance there for three or four hours, and this E-to-acid thing I've got is beautiful, I strongly recommend it. (Someone later told me what a ate was probably mescaline. Who knows?) Then it was time to go. Getting back to the main camp would have been impossible if it weren't for the laser beam. About ten feet off the ground, there was a green laser beam beacon shooting straight and level all the way back to the Man himself. Bneeeer. So fucking cool and precise and... green. You could have walked right under it the whole way home, but we got a ride with someone right to the House of Doors, where the church of speed and strobe lights was status quo.
Back at the shack, we sit around for a bit, smoke a bowl, and I can actually see my stoned thoughts bouncing off their targets, not finding the right adresses. I watch myself forget what I'm talking about. I realize everyone is staring at me, waiting for me to finish a story, some fiction I was apparently working on five seconds ago. C'mon, leave me alone! How am I supposed to know what I was thinking? So much shit's happened since then. Might as well ask me what I had for breakfast on my 3rd birthday.
But everybody's getting sleepy. (Is everyone just blinking at me as I giggle and mumble, waiting for me to shut up so they can go to bed?) I realize I'm going to be up for at least 6 more hours, tripping solo. I'm on my twentieth beer, but I top it off and say goodnight to the girls.
Steve is the biggest nightowl I know, he'll stay up with you any night of the week, so he and I head towards downtown, where there's something on fire and some noise.
Before we even get there, the drums are scaring me. Hackles again. Something is very serious about this thing going on. This is not a hippy-dippy drum circle (shave and a haircut, doop-doop). These are the terror-drums. This is a war between indian nations about to happen. Acid-fueled hellfire. A hundred madmen strong, the energy was conquering, horrifying, a smoking storm of insanity. And not just drums, there was man-made petroleum-fired electricity at work here too. Slashing amplified acid guitars, a brutal orchestra of feedback. "Oh," I said, "It's like this, hunh?"
We stepped up to the fringes of the circle, which ringed around a windy pile of burning wood and hay as big as a house. I swear I hear someone say, "Come in brother. All Men are welcome here." As if a gathering of revolutionaries has assembled. As if the warriors of the world have come to cast votes on the matter of the coming attack. Brothers, it is shotgun-loading time.
There is one woman there, among a hundred men. She is bald, naked, and filthy, dancing like a writhing demon, not next to, but literally in the fire. There was something ferocious about her sexual presence there. This naked girl, performing the dance of Temptation before a crazed army. You could feel the thin inch of indecision that kept her from being gang-raped. She felt this too, obviously, and was allowing herself the rush of this dangerous sexual position. The fact that she was never raped (not that I know she wasn't) is either a testament to male self-control, or a side-effect of the knowledge that she was clearly a minion from hell and would turn into a lizard- bat as soon as your tongue touched hers. But I wonder what she was thinking. I'd really like to know exactly what she was getting off on.
This was the most pagan element of the whole Burning Man event. If this firepit wasn't an actual fissure into hell itself, I don't know what is. Naked devil-worshipers grunting and howling through crackling smoke as the heat brought a sweaty shine to their sooty bodies. And not fun-hooray wolf-howling either. Pathetic, squealing pigs in agony. Siamese cats fucking on the fence. Reverb-amplified horfing and reaming and sobbing and upchucking. Badger-snarlings of "Fuck! Fuck!" for no reason other than the joy of cursing. The sounds of mankind at its worst, sinners who hate each other and themselves, but are too selfish to stop sinning. Selfish and conceited and weak and mean. But at the same time, primal and on fire and more alive and furious than any animal has ever been, no matter how ravenous. The genuine beast, no denying it. A truth I always thought I wanted to see, but now that I have, I'm not so sure.
And somehow, the MTV cameraman there made the whole scene even more evil in a modern-cheesy, cleverly oh-so-human way. Hell is state-of-the-art, baby. Something about his camera looked hellishly artificial, like a Fred Flinstone bedrock-cam. Obviously, this poor soul had been some paparrazzi sleazeball while he was alive on earth, and had been specially sentenced to cover the Neverending Acid-Jam for all Eternity in the kingdom of Satan as an employee of HTV.
As this guy whipped his camera around in trademark MTV style, the crowd took up a menacing chant of "Burn the media.... burn the media..." He stuck it out for a minute or two so that MTV could assimilate even this sentiment into its self-reflexive corporate maw, and then quietly turned the camera off and calmly stepped away, almost becoming invisible as he did. All business. Just doing a job. A real pro, I have to say. Handled the crowd perfectly, nailed the shot, probably got laid later too.
Laugh if you must, but right about here I got a wave of panic that perhaps I was actually in hell for reals, that I had wandered here because my perverted own interests had led me to a fitting punishment. That I had been sentenced to spend forever here on Dick Island. Along with every other cocky wannabe-Lucifer musician who ever had the conceit to think himself so bad that Satan kept a little warm spot for him. The posers, the shit-talkers, the pussy bad-boys, the smart-mouthed punks who aren't even close to being as cool as they think they are. Sentenced to play in the Eternal Acid-Jam of shitty soloists all trying to be rock stars, be the biggest cock on the block, and get the last lick in. And because we were all the same, it would never end. I'll stop if you do first, brother. No? Well bring it on, bitch! I have seen the genius of Satan's methods. There is a perfection to the system that one must respect.
The funniest part about all this is how little of it is hallucinated. I may be reading into the interpretation a little, but I am not making any of this up. I did not, for instance, hallucinate the Zombie Roadie. The Zombie Roadie lurked around with mad professor hair, circles uder his eyes, a lab coat and rubber gloves. Zombie Roadie's job in hell (what he did on Earth to deserve this fate, you have to wonder) was to make sure all the equipment in Hell was running correctly, so that under no circumstances would the Eternal Acid-Jam be preemptively resolved because of some technical problem. And this guy was good-- Satan gets all the best people. If a mike got unplugged, he dragged himself over and plugged it back in. If an amp got knocked over, he mindlessly set it back up. If for some reason there was a relative lull in the savage noise, he set up a feedback loop or added a little distortion to keep the whole thing burning.
The lead guitar player wore a pig-nose mask and green fur goat-leggings. His contribution to the vibe was a dumb, repetative little "Nyah-nyah" bratty potty-mouthed lick, but he had the advantage of being from Hell, so he could keep it up indefinitely. He was practically masturbating on us. I leaned over to the guy next to me and said, "Do we really all have to go through this with him?"
He turned to me with the grave indignity of the converted and said, "Yes. I think we do."
"Oh, sorry," I covered myself.
Somehow I got it into my deranged head that I was here to do battle with him. He was like some kind of Satanic lieutenant that I had to go head-to-head with. Since everyone in the circle could read my thoughts, every time I came up with some new beat or a counterpart to whatever riff he was playing, I got shouts of encouragement from the lads who still hadn't chosen sides yet.
"Yeah, man, keep it up. Bring it back. You got him."
I thought to myself that I wasn't sure if I liked being placed in this heroic role, that I wasn't sure if I wanted to be on the side of good or not. So I made it clear through musical telepathy that I was for neither side, that I am a believer in both good and evil. And that as an individual, I reserve the right not to play for either side. And with that, I backed out, leaving the dick pit to its own punishment.
From a distance, the pit looked more than anything else, like the biggest circle jerk in history. I tell this to Steve, who is still with me at this point, and he says, "Well, isn't that pretty much what it is?" The moaning and hissing over the PA really helped the whole image. But as I look back one last time, I swear I see a group of guys around the congas, led by Mr. Pignose himself, beating away at the drums not with their hands, but with their red and swollen erections.
Time to go, I'd say. Yes, indeedy. Steve and I go out to see the Man, who by the way, has a little chamber underneath that you can hang out in, always with somebody cool waiting there to talk with you. Forgetting this, my delusions of grandeur take on new proportions, and Steve has to convince me that it would not, in fact be such a good idea to just torch the Burning Man right now, even if, as I claim, "He is daring me to do it".
"Don't you see? It would be so Burning Man to just do it now. I mean that's the whole thing isn't it? No rules? It's like a big dare, waiting for someone to take action, and someone's got to do it!"
"No, I don't think that would be good, Jamie. Why don't we go sit somewhere away from the Man for a little bit?"
Somehow Steve leaves me to my own devices. I wander into peoples tents, check out the persian tea-room where the junkies are sleeping on each other. I realize I'm tempted to go back and check out the dick-pit to see how things are shaking out. This time, I know better, and keep my distance, although it does dawn on me that I am getting sucked into my own damnation again. I'm a sinner, let me sin. I take a seat at a small nice little fire circle with a sane-looking dude in a beard and pioneer hat, watching the Jam from a ways off.
"Still at it?" I ask.
"Yuup. You want a chair? I got one right here if you do."
He gets up and fetches me a folding chair.
"How much gas is left in the generator?" I ask.
"Oh plenty. They can go all day if they want to. I'm just here kinda working for the Burning Man people to make sure nothing goes wrong."
"Honestly, what are you gonna do about it if something goes wrong?"
"I'm just here to make sure it doesn't."
I sat there for two hours and watched those fuckers slash away at their instruments. Right about sunrise, it came down to two guys: one guitar, and one on the percussion. Both were doing some stupid lame shit, just to keep at it till the other one gave up. We'd already been through fifty false endings that they just couldn't live with. Finally they worked out this pathetic half-assed compromise that was so childish and clumsy that it honestly felt like neither of them won. Then a new guitar playerer started up again, and everyone yelled at him, so the drummer came back and put it all to bed with the final chorus from "The Mouseketeers". You know "K- E- Y... Why? Because we love you!" And that was that.
Some dreadlock punk started screaming and kicking up dust, cause he was still going strong.
"This is IT, man! I mean, I know you're all just molecules, and I'm just molecules, but this is fucking IT!"
From all over camp, the heckling answered.
"Chill out, man." "Go to bed, you fuckers!" "Shut up, you fucking hippy!"
I'm just about to get up when this persian girl with a truly unfortunate nose comes up next to me, wiping her face with a cleansing pad. I explain to her that she can't win, that the dust will be back in ten minutes, just as bad as before. She pouts and continues to wipe, but she doesn't leave, like she's waiting for me to dismiss her. This, it turns out, is the closest I will come to getting laid over the whole weekend. I excuse myself and shuffle back to the RV to lie down.
I lie down on my sleeping bag with my eyes wide fucking open for twenty minutes, watching the occasional freak get up to go to the Port-o-let. This isn't working is it? I tip toe into the camper to fill up another beer. Gotta love acid, when you have a keg to get rid of.
Back on my sleeping bag, I notice a light in the distance, blinking at me. Wink wink. Something about it seems like a signal or something.
Blink! Blink blink!
A signal?
Bliiiiink!
For me?
Blink blink blink!
You want me to come over there?
Bliiiink! Blink-blink!
I follow the light about a half-mile across other people's camps and discover it is a bright coleman gas lantern blowing on a hook in the most beautiful, comfortable oasis of a camp I have yet seen. A huge white parachute canopy, a nice clean green carpet, a little table with candles burning, and a nice low hammock, wide enough for two people, with nice pillows. Totally deserted, just waiting for a weary tripper to wander in from the desert and find. Obviously, this was a trap of some kind, so I high-tail it out of there before the giant spider goddess could drop her sticky nets around me, or whatever.
Back at camp, guess what? Still not sleepy! No sir! I stare at our naked lesbian neighbors for a while, as they make coffee.
I must have dozed off for an hour cause I woke up to... Neverending Acid Jam 2! This time, it's our neighbors. They abused their amplifiers and screamed about killing their parents from 10 in the morning until the sun went down. Some chick got on the mike and faked orgasms for an hour.
"I want a big dick. I want bigger tits. I want the zits on my back to go away..." repeat.
Make up your mind, honey. You want the cock and the tits? You don't get both.
Eventually, you got used to the noise, and then you start to kind of like it. In any case, it's Burning Man. This is the one place you can't tell people to shut up.
We wasted the day wandering around, checking people out. Someone had built a castle out of pianos that you could bang away on to your heart's content. Several people parachuted into downtown. Planes were doing seriously dangerous stunts over a crowd of 10,000 people all day long.
All the sexual tension in the air was really driving me nuts, and although I was glad you weren't there to see me in my depraved state, well, you weren't there, so I took a ride out into the flat to spend some quality time with myself. I rode two miles out until all I could see were dust trails from yahoos drag racing across the playa, and took off all my clothes. Of course, as soon as I get warmed up, some fucking plane starts circling overhead like a condor. At first it pissed me off, cause you had just asked me to turn you over and get nasty, but after a second, I figured what the hell. If this was the weirdest thing they saw all day, they weren't looking too hard. So I had my way with you there on the cracked desert floor as they laughed and took aerial pictures or something. I even waved when I was finished.
I spent the afternoon chasing the shadow of the RV so I didn't have to lay in the sun. Spent the evening grilling the salmon, though I had no intention of eating the thing, but it had to get cooked soon or it was gonna get stinky. The peach pie was a disaster, it looked like a driver's-eye view of a collision with a fruit truck, all smashed on a cellophane windshield. Food was the last thing on my mind. All I needed was champagne, hallucinagens, and a big burning sculpture and I was happy.
By nightfall, there were bands playing on stages everywhere (The Mermen? Ever heard of them?) And people were setting off homemade explosions regularly. Again, we had to go through the drug scheduling deliberations same as the night before.
"I'll take whatever you don't eat," I said. Let's just go watch this fucker go boom.
The actual burning of the Man was... not anticlimactic, but all business. I guess last year things got pretty sketchy, so they wanted to do it without a fuss. So, big fire, then they yank him over, and everyone dances around like natives. One guy next to me took a lungful of smoky air and took up one long shout of, "Freedom!" Call me a yahoo, but it struck me that Burning Man is an especially American phenomenon. These people were all liberty-loving, rootin-tootin', don't tread on me, Ford truck-drivin' individuals. There were actually quite a few American flags flying around camp. Certainly, there is no way this kind of an event could happen anywhere else. In a weird way, I think the founding fathers would approve.
We shroomed, but they mostly just made me confused and queasy. The funniest part of the whole burning of the Man was that after he's gone, everyone got lost cause you'd gotten used to finding your bearings by where you were in relation to the Man. So all these lost souls were travelling in packs like some dark, dusty outer ring of hell, lit only by swinging car headlights, all asking each other the same question: where am I? It took me two hours to find a toilet, and then another hour to find downtown, and another 45 minutes to get back to the RV. This was all after I left the group to go shit real quick and come back.
Another night of weird madness. More pits of hell. A rock opera put on by our neighbors, Acid Jam 2. A life-size construction of that boardgame, "Mousetrap" where a bowling ball goes down a chute, into a bucket, onto a swing, etc... Pretty cool project. And then more drug-inpired bands, S&M girls, and one final stop at the House of Doors, just to be sure no one had unplugged the strobe light by accident or something. Layed down under the stars at what must have been 4, and finally slept, thanks to the champagne, to the dulcet strains of shrieking metal and amplified animal screams.
We woke up and cleaned our camp up a bit, stuffed our filthy selves into the Princess and talked about showers as we headed out. Crossing back over the desert, the horde of cars had a tendency to spread out to avoid each others' dust trails, which made for a cool effect, like something from a nuclear holocaust movie. I almost cried when radio Burning Man faded out.
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