Wednesday, August 30
< p r e v n e x t >
As it turns out, sleep does help, quite a bit - the playa is friendly in the morning, and I wander over to chat with my neighbors for a bit before heading back over to Costco to find out who my soulmate is. Her name is Jen, and from what I can tell, the people at Costco seem to have done a pretty good job. I'm given her questionnaire so I can see her answers - she likes to laugh (always a good thing), likes boys (very important), is a dog person (good answer), and despite her reluctance to reveal the intimate details of her sex life on an anonymous survey that will be given to a complete stranger, she claims to be a fan of leather, latex, and handcuffs (the latter is answered with an emphatic "Oh yes"). Of course, she could be an accountant from Cleveland and fill out the survey this way just for kicks. I figure I should stop by and say hi, at the very least. I make a mental note to swing by her camp later that afternoon.
In the meantime, I figure I'll stop by Camp Texture and take a shot at tracking down my one pseudo-contact out here, who also happens to be named Jen. I noticed the camp yesterday, but everyone was busy putting their structure together. Today things look a bit more relaxed, and I figure it's as good a time as any to come over and say hello. I wander up and ask, "Is there a Jen here?" Someone yells in the direction of a camping tent, and a few moments later I'm introducing myself to yet another total stranger. As soon as I explain who I am ("Hi, I knew your sister for about a month back in Boston and I heard from her that you would be at Burning Man..."), she treats me like a long-lost relative, starts chatting me up, and insists that I come to the cocktail party at their tent later this evening.
The afternoon passes quickly while I drop by a few more camps near my tent. In one called Recharge, massages and figure drawing are going on in the shade, while iced tea and lemonade are being served. I make a mental note to visit this place again later. As I'm riding homeward, I pass by an event calling itself the car(cass) wash. It's basically a bunch of people set up like an assembly line, helping to clean the playa dust off each other. Each person takes a turn at each station - pre-rinse, soap, scrub, and wash - and then you get cleaned up yourself. Being pretty grubby (my personal hygiene to this point has largely consisted of wiping myself down with a wet facecloth each morning), I take a turn through the line, and come out feeling refreshed and ready to socialize.
The Camp Texture cocktail party is fast approaching, but I still have some time to pay Jen, my Costco soulmate, a visit. Perhaps I can convince her to come to the cocktail party with me. I toy with the idea of putting together a pseudo-racy note (I am her soulmate, after all), scrap it, and decide to simply bring her a balloon as a gift. Silly? Maybe, but when you're in the middle of the desert without a mega-mall or a flower truck in sight, "It's the thought that counts" is reality, not just an empty platitude. As it turns out, when I stop by her camp later that afternoon, alas, Jen is off wandering with someone else. I do the noble thing, keep my jealousy in check, and leave the balloon with her fellow campers to give to her. I never make it back to her camp. It ends up being a small but nagging regret in the back of my mind, probably because I was still a bit awkward about the idea of introducing myself to a complete stranger out of the blue (and presenting myself as her soulmate, no less!), when that's really the last thing I should be worrying about out here.
At the moment, I'm not really thinking about any of this - I'm heading back toward Camp Texture to have drinks with my new friends. As I poke my head into the tent, the party is just getting underway - a makeshift bar has been set up in one corner, and the scattered couches and chairs aren't quite full yet. I seek out Jen like a safety blanket at first, but it quickly becomes clear that Camp Texture is a friendly bunch all the way around. I talk for a while with Jane, another Texture camper, about the Burning Man experience. My head's been buzzing all day, and now that my first cocktail is settling in, I'm feeling unusually chatty. Before I know it, people are streaming into the tent, and I'm bouncing from one conversation to the next. In the midst of this idle chatter, a common thread quickly emerges - everyone is Canadian. It turns out that this is an explicitly Canadian cocktail party - all of the members of Camp Texture are Canadian, and Kamp Kanada has been invited to stop by, too. I am an interloper, albeit an invited one. Weakened by vodka, I am defenseless, and the Canadians quickly sniff me out as the outsider that I am. I'm subjected to a rigorous examination on all things Canadian, which I pass marginally, thanks mostly to a generous grading curve. As a reward, I am dubbed an honorary Canadian for the evening. When an impromptu rendition of "O Canada" breaks out in the crowd, I hum along as inconspicuously as possible. By the time Kamp Kanada arrives with a sizable crew, the party is humming.
Several conversations and several drinks later, people are making plans for the evening. Plans to attend "some sort of strip show" with a group from Kamp Kanada are derailed when we fail to mobilize quickly enough. Instead a group of about five of us decides to wander toward the 2:00 end of the city, an area that I've barely explored thus far. Thanks to my new friends, I have a posse for the first time out on the playa, and it feels good. We tear through the streets like a BMX Hell's Angels, winding through the crowd, hooting at people, and generally being a friendly nuisance. Of the camps we visit, two are worth noting. The first is one that I've been wanting to check out for a couple of days now - it's called the Temple of Xara, and one peek inside reveals the effort that must have gone into the camp. Blacklights flood the interior in an unearthly glow, as the floor, walls, and ceiling are covered end-to-end with fluorescent paint, sculpture, and decorations. There's a dancefloor at one end, and to the side is a chillout area covered in real grass.
Only a few camps away is Bianca's Smut Shack, our next destination. Its reputation precedes it as a den of iniquity, even by playa standards. I have no idea what we'll find here, but it's bound to be interesting. My expectations are quickly and quietly deflated as Bianca's is revealed for what it truly is - a middle-of-the-road dance club, and a tame one at that. A Madonna remix is pumping out of the speakers as we park our bikes, and that pretty much sets the tone - there's a busy dancefloor, but nothing you couldn't find on a Friday night at any Generic Big-City Dance Club. We wander in and dance for a while; eventually I get tired enough to stop and look around. Our group's been separated by this point, so I stumble through the crowd until I find Jen again. I gather from her that people are going their separate ways, and the two of us decide to hop on our bikes and venture off together. By this point the wind is picking up - it's my first real taste of the unpredictable weather that will batter us for the rest of the week. It quickly becomes too much to bear, and we decide to take shelter in my Jeep for awhile. As we make our way back across the playa, the wind grows into a furious gale. Dust clouds swirl into our eyes and mouths as we weave in and out of the crowd, which by this point is scattering and heading for shelter.
Originally, I had grand plans to bring lots of music with me to Burning Man - I was going to pack some records, in the hopes that I might get to spin at one of the many techno camps; I also had plans to bring every CD I ever loved, and listen to them all in the desert - I can trace the curve of my life by running a finger down my CD racks, and I wanted to do some reflecting with my music. I ended up bringing a small but significant wallet full of discs, and as Jen and I climb into the Jeep, I pop one into the stereo: Jeff Buckley's "Grace". I'll end up listening to it many times before the week is out; now, I let my mind slip into another place, occasionally surfacing long enough to talk to Jen. To me, these songs are hymns, thunderclouds, whispers and earthquakes; they are aching, soft, blazing with embarrassing amounts of life and emotion: in short, they are the perfect soundtrack to my Burning Man experience, and as they echo through the Jeep I delight in the involuntary shivers that run through me. Jen is listening attentively - thank you, Jen! - as I babble incoherently about how wonderful the CD is. Time passes; eventually restlessness takes over. I comment that I probably shouldn't run down the car battery, and we decide to venture outside again.
Reality comes crashing back when we return to Camp Texture. If anything, the wind has gotten stronger; the dome-shaped tent is caving in on the windward side, and the PVC supports are being twisted and yanked up from the ground. It occurs to me that if the support poles pull up much further, the wind will get underneath. I have sudden visions of a strong gust lifting the tent up, floating it away like a dead leaf, and dropping it onto an unsuspecting group of campers. I grab one of the support poles and hang on tight; soon there are others grabbing on, and Jen is working her way around the tent, cutting the fabric cover away from the PVC skeleton. It's a pretty haphazard operation, but we're not looking for style points. Gradually the strain on my arms eases, as the wind loses its foothold in the newly ventilated roof. The fabric peels back, and the foundation of Camp Texture - what's left of it - settles to the ground again. My initial burst of adrenaline has faded, replaced by a wide-eyed respect for our surroundings.