Burning Man Files: Part 2

6:07 AM: I didn't sleep very well due to all the noise last night, lots of music and screaming and partying going on all around me. A few times I thought incoming campers were going to drive an RV right over my tent, causing me to shit my pants and run for cover as yellow headlights and the sound of gunning diesel engines sent me scurrying from my tiny nylon shelter. Fortunately I was spared. Perhaps next year I won't set up my tent so close to the road. Also, around 2 AM someone took a piss right next to my tent. I wake up to find a Playa Puddle (a small indentation and dried lake in the mud) right next to my cooler. Charming.

8:15 AM: I'm craving coffee so I head to Center Camp for an espresso, the only thing you can "officially" purchase at Burning Man with cash besides a ticket. On my way I see people cooking breakfast, cleaning camp, washing... It is much more like "camp" than the blinky-light party I remember from last night. The music is now more subdued and mellow. Everyone is still sleeping or chilled out. A few zombies looking like they've been dragged through mud (literally, they were covered with mud) roam the playa amidst morning bike-riders. Hopefully they will sleep before the sun bakes their shell of filth permanently to their bodies.

9:34 AM: After two lattes, an hour of lounging on couches, and a headful of the strange chatter among the local freaks ("Did you get that thing out of your foot yet?" "No, I'm just keeping my shoe on until I leave..."), I decide it's time to head out and find some artistic culture. I walk no more than two minutes before I find "The Alter of Misanthropic Art", which more than lives up to its name. In addition to dismembered action figures and disemboweled stuffed animals pinned to the alter in obscene positions and covered with what appears to be actual blood (chicken blood?), this candle-ringed alter (the candles were not lit, it was morning) was topped by a photo-realstic image of a naked George W. Bush (on all fours, ball-gag in mouth), being ass-reamed by a grotesquely obese Dick Cheney (smiling in ecstasy, leather harness, SS hat, holding a riding crop). The caption, in Gothic lettering reads "NeoCon Love". It looks like a high-res color output from an industrial poster-sized laser printer. I marvel at the Photoshop technique, how much it must have cost to print such an abomination, and what the people at Kinko's (or wherever) must have thought when they printed this thing. As I'm gawking, a balding overweight man with a big bushy beard wearing nothing but a furry loincloth and sandals (a bear?) stands beside me and says, "Sends shivers down your spine..." I nod and say, "Yeah, but in the bad way..." just to make sure he doesn't get any wrong ideas.

11:10 AM: I venture out onto the playa to see the man. There has been some buzz going around that someone lit the man on fire last night. The whole thing is blocked off and there are some DPW (??) people there holding people back and taking sections apart, getting ready to rebuild. Gangs of folks have gathered to sit and watch this "Behind the Scenes" moment. I sit and smoke a joint with a group six or so well-groomed guys who claim to be investment analysts and day traders on vacation from the Bay Area, except for one guy who seems to be their dealer or wacky Halo clan-buddy or something like that (the one who has no job). I get the sense that they're putting me on about the money thing but I don't really care, it's just chatter. I decide to play them and say I'm here to watch for UFOs coming from the direction of Area 51, since their activity always spikes right around the week of Burning Man. I point out over a ring of small mountains to the South, everyone nods quietly, dead serious, no one seems to think I am joking. Suddenly one dude starts into his "I saw a UFO once..." story. After the third such re-telling of said story (in a mall parking lot, no less), I excuse myself. I have been mindlessly chugging water all morning, time to make a Playa Puddle.

HIGH NOON: Did I mention it's hot here? Ay carumba! Totally exposed and searing in the sun, I make my way towards a small group of college-aged girls venturing across the Playa. "Where you guys going?" I shout, trying not to sound like a total creep. "Trekking!" says one. "You coming?" Yes I am! Screw being hot, I'm a boy-toy now! They all have a wholesome, athletic look about them and I find out they are from Denver and are here to "party". They are on their way to find someplace called "Pleasure Island" where they are serving tropical-theme blended and mixed drinks all day -- Daiquiris, Pina Coladas, Margaritas, etc. It takes a bunch of walking around, getting lost, and backtracking, but we finally find the place, a veritable palapa of an establishment with a horseshoe bar. As I expected the place is packed. As I did not expect it is packed mostly by women, who seem drawn to tropical-themed blended ice drinks like bonobo monkeys in heat. Two shirtless guys behind the bar (buff, total stud men), wink knowingly as they shove girly drink after girly drink at me. Some girls start dancing on the bar. The girl next to me falls off her barstool and cracks up because it's "Totally awesome!" to be falling down drunk. After about an hour of this perfect madness the heat and alcohol makes me dizzy, and there are so many bare breasts I have stopped looking at them. I must be fucked up. Yup. I can barely walk. Those guys were giving me doubles, or triples. The bastards played me! Off to find a couch somewhere in the shade...