'Bred Crumbs

Tales of the Playa

10:00 PM

Five days back, and I'm still having trouble downloading my Burning Man experience. That's partly a factor of busy-ness; as soon as I could start getting the sand out of my shoes and mind, I needed to focus on our film, which we started rehearsing Wednesday and start shooting tomorrow.

But also, I just haven't found the words. The parts of me that Burning Man inspired don't seem to include the ones that drive the typing fingers.

At first, I though I would do a long day-by-day journal, starting with the surreal experience of waking up predawn after my first night, realizing with surprise that the tent was finally not blowing at all, and emerging to the ghostly sight of blocks and blocks of tents, domes, and RVs, strangely quiet, spreading out in a soft arc as far as the eye can see. And what's that strange sound that seemed so much louder and closer when I woke up than it actually was when I got outside? Just the randomly mixed thump-thump-thump of eight different rave camps still churning at the edges of the city? Or is it the sound of the reader snoring as I go on for pages about waking up?

You see my quandary. Then apply Vegas rules to Black Rock City – what happens in, stays in – and I can't even mention some of the highlights. I'm left resorting to cliché words, like "amazing" and "incredible." "Life-changing"? Don't know about that one. But I do know that, despite the happy return to my life of showers and non-portable toilets and a bed not soaked in dust, I would often have rather still been in the desert the past week than anywhere else. Even San Francisco.

On the second day of our trip, also the second day of 35-mph duststorms, I wondered what the hell I was doing there. Now, I'm hoping I can go back next year.

Changes would have to be made. Number one, we must have bikes. We didn't see about half the city just because our feet got tired of hiking. Number two, I want to participate more, have a theme camp of some sort. And three, it would be cool, if we again have someone mechanically inclined in our camp, to have an art car. On the last two points, the gears have already begun turning.

Number four: if I'm going to change my skin color, it has to happen some way that doesn't leave residue on everything I touch.

Beyond all that, for now, I'm left with stray spots of thought, as random and indelible as the stains of playa dust still clinging to things that made the journey ...

·  ·  ·

Though BRC was a much nicer community that the real world, it wasn't as hippie-intensive as I expected. But I did get a nice little taste of love-in the first night, when we walked out to The Man. Still a newbie, I didn't yet realize that glowsticks aren't just a ubiquitous fashion statement; they're needed to mark you in the dark so art cars and bikes don't flatten your ass. So I arrived at the center of the city unilluminated.

A cute guy looked at me and said, a little sorrowfully, "Dude, you're not glowing at all."

He pulled off a glow-ring from around his neck, crowned me with it, and hugged me. I thanked him and said, "But now you're not glowing."

"I'm glowing on the inside," he said.

He meant it.

·  ·  ·

Though BRC was a much nicer community that the real world, it wasn't without tension, or a-holes. The night of The Burn, there was a controversy about protocol for watching the pre-Burn festivities. Most people thought this should occur sitting on the ground, to let more people see the fire twirlers and such. At first, I thought trying to convince a circle of 30,000 people to sit down was crazy, but most did.

Where I was, though, a stubborn few refused to hit the ground. One of them was a huge, mustachioed drag queen. As calls for him to sit grew more heated, he sassed back, "I can't sit. I'll spill my drink."

Honey, that crap may get laughs in the Castro, but it doesn't play on the playa. As the cries to "Sit down!" amplified, the queen pled being unable to sit on the ground for long stretches without pain, which I can buy; Robbie has the same problem. But it was too late; the queen was roundly hated by then.

We dodged the controversy by moving toward the back, where rows of people were standing without complaint and were generally just less agitated. And of course, when The Burn started, everyone got up and started moving anyway. About ten minutes in, well before The Man did the splits and fell into the massive fire devouring the dome he stood on, a guy behind us yelled, with a facetious whine, "Sit down!" There was much laughter.

·  ·  ·

When you are out on the playa, you don't realize the dirt of the old lake bed has a smell. But boy howdy, you do when it comes home with you.

·  ·  ·

For breakfast each morning, we had oatmeal and/or ramen. And not just ordinary store-bought ramen – we had ramen from Indonesia, which exotically contains not one but four flavor packs. One is chili powder, which comes in a pouch bearing this peculiar drawing:

We came to know this little guy as Cancerous Military Chili-Fighting Man. And the last night, he saved our culinary behinds.

Half our camp had to leave before the Burn, and we sent as much of the camp back with them as we could. Unfortunately, we also sent some of the key ingredients for our intended last dinner. It was only when we sat down to cook the chicken dish that we realized the salt and oil had hit the road.

"There are oil packets in the Indonesian ramen," I suggested, adding that the other various spices included were salt-loaded.

So we improvised a delicious butter-chili-chicken dinner. And I came off as some sort of Chef McGyver.

·  ·  ·

I learned at Burning Man that I have ancraophobia: fear of wind. A pre-BM example: I'm a nervous wreck on small sailboats, because of their constant tipping in the wind. I logically know the listing is necessary for the boat to move, but that doesn't keep my nerves from insisting we're constantly about to capsize.

Just after we got camp set up (thank goodness), the high winds started. For me, the tent offered no security; I was convinced it was always about to collapse. Eventually, my nerves frayed so much that, screw it, I'd just go out for cocktails. My fear of the wind evaporated when I didn't feel trapped by it.

And it vanished entirely when a windy night passed and neither the tent nor the dome caved in or blew away. When the wind returned the second night, I slept right through it. When I woke up and found the side of the tent being pressed against my head, I didn't care. Huff and puff, I know you aren't blowing my house down.

Though it might have, if we'd ever suffered the 80-mph winds that were constantly rumored to be in the forecast. The first night, with such rumors flying, we battened down camp as best we could, wondering how it would hold if predictions came to pass (which they didn't). Someone pointed out that the thing we chose to shade our dome, a parachute, was a device designed expressly to catch air. Oh, that.

·  ·  ·

Going in, you imagine that Burning Man is just a buffet of sex and drugs, harder to avoid than partake of. Not quite. In a way, it works the way the default world (as Burners call it) does: you can find it if you want it. Thus, our BM scene revolved mainly around drinks and siestas, not hallucinogens or random hookups.

Indeed, Robbie and I found nightlife in Black Rock City disappointing, except for all the cool fire art. We didn't know where anything we might be interested in was happening, and we wound up retiring, defeated, just after midnight. But then it occurred to us that our social problems at BRC were the same as in SF: we have few gay friends and practically no gay network, and we aren't comfortable at big parties. In the real world, that doesn't stop us from finding fun, and in the end it didn't at Burning Man either. We realized we just enjoyed the days much more than the nights. Once the sandstorms stopped, that is.

·  ·  ·

While we napped the second afternoon, an RV full of frat-type boys pulled in across the street and immediately starting smearing paint on each other's torsoes. That was a little distracting.

·  ·  ·

After the event, The San Francisco Chronicle concentrated on hand-wringing over whether Burning Man has gotten too big, abandoned its principles, etc. True, I did see less art than I expected, other than fire-spewing metal pieces and art cars, though I also think it's true that the entire massive community is one grand piece of performance art.

But I hope even veterans see that it's a still a very good thing that's blossomed out there in the desert. And worries about change dog any event-oriented sub-culture. I know Dewayne, above all, will recognize it from his years of following drum corps, where every year someone frets about "the direction drum corps is going," oblivious to how many thousands continue to discover it and enrich their lives with it.

·  ·  ·

Much alcohol was consumed, but the best beverage I had was Vietnamese Iced Coffee from, naturally, Vietnamese Iced Coffee Camp. Delicous, and the line was vastly entertaining thanks to our witty and social hosts.

That was Saturday afternoon, the best day because of the fun we found (some of which will not be detailed here), and because of the sterling weather. On the way back to camp after the iced coffee, we stopped at a camp that was serving up fruit punch with a kick, and before I could finish downing that we found that Camp Space Blender, our most frequent haunt outside our camp, was serving sno-cones spiked with hard lemonade.

And that brought me to as close as I came to an epiphany about my Burning Man experience. As we strolled down 8:00 toward Pluto, I thought:

I am walking under a desert sun in just a sarong and sandals, carrying an alcoholic fruit drink in one hand and a root-beer-flavored, Jack Daniels-spiked sno-cone in the other. And I'm orange.

That's when the cliché adjectives began to afflict me.

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