A lot of folks who come to burning man each year, have a Themed Camp. These are camps they must build way ahead of time, for years , lit up and sand-proof, or sort of sand proof. There was the Lounge of the 7 Sins camp, where people could spin the wheel of sin, and perform that sin on stage for a flaming cocktail. There was the Bad Idea Theatre, that showed movies at night, the Barbie Death Camp, which had thousands of little Barbie Dolls marching into ovens on the lawn of their camp. There was Camp Horsecock, Camp Handjob, camp “Jesus was a dumb fuck”, A “Hard” ware shop, KFC (who gave out chicken biscuits in the morning, but only if you’d take a shot of bourbon first). There was a Tittyman Camp, an ass man camp, a “first time fister camp” ( I ended up here by accident, and was handed a bottle of lube that I thought was a bottle of hand sanitizer witch I immediately squirted all over my hands and rubbed it all over like I would sanitizer in the desert. I look back now, knowing that this must have looked like I was no first timer. They had little placemats on the bar explaining that in order to fist someone you first had to position your hand like a sock puppet (this is called the goose position), you insert this way, then make a fist, ala fisting. I hadn’t known any of this. But it ended up being my favorite camp, though I never saw any fisting there was a fellow there everyone called Dad, that kept us full of beer, and the occasional shot of vodka. I never called him dad.) Now a lot of those camps seem sex themed, and I guess in name they were, and I’m sure there was sex a plenty to be had there. But I think, more than anything those names were there to make you feel uncomfortable, to ride by and ogle, then say “fuck it, I’m going in” only to find out that there were just a bunch of people like you there, having a good time in ways most people have good times. Sure there was some fucking going on in corners everywhere, but who cares. The boobs get normal after a while, like there supposed to be there. In fact boobs ARE supposed to be there, I think, or something like that. There was a Tennis Camp, with a day-glo tennis court, and a there was a full bowling alley. There were camps with pool tables, and fully stocked bars. There were tables with signs that read ADVICE sitting out in the middle of the desert. Sometimes there was someone sitting there, sometimes there wasn’t. There was naked karaoke. I made a mental note to stop by there, and belt out Robert Goulet’s version of “My Favorite Things” from the Sound of Music. And Waldo was there. You’d see him every once and a while, walking around amidst the masses. Waldo. After , exploring for that first day, we came back before sundown, and my brother, who’d we’d lost along the way along with his buddy Ted (built like a brick shithouse, triathelete and I would learn later, not afraid of anything.) had prepared jerk lamb chops on the grill. We grabbed them by the bone, ate them and waited for the sun to go down. As I ate I saw a big weather balloon super high in the sky, right alongside the moon. I was high from the brownie, something I hadn’t been in years. High on pot brownies. I said, “Wow, I guess you can, like see another moon from here huh?”
“The earth only has one Moon” John says.
“Oh”
We couldn’t stop laughing.

Burning Man Pt. 4

The Zone was just a line in the sand that Larry Drew. He and some friends had been at Baker Beach up above San Francisco in the eighties, running around naked and burning things. Inevitably, the cops showed up, and Larry and some friends took their effigies out into the desert in 1990, I think, where the sand was germinated and the man grew to what I was looking at today. Back then the thing was eight feet tall. Today it was ninety, and looked like it may have taken years to build. Looking out across the Playa you could see off in the distance, some sort of Chrome rocket ship, breathing fire, temples and strange structures dotted the landscape way out from the camp half-circle, way out in the desert. Somebody had flown hundreds of giant weather balloons into the sky in another corner. You could see them up there, floating, but you couldn’t quite make out what was going on underneath. Domes were everywhere, Giant ones, covered with sheepskin or something. I couldn’t really tell from our camp. Camp was like a city, with streets named with letters, and cross streets with a time. I think we were at k and 4:15 or something. If you are looking at the satellite photo, on the far right outer circle.

Burning man was founded upon Ten Principles. Everyone out there likes to talk about them. Here they are.
• Radical inclusion – Basically anyone who can afford a ticket can get in. Tickets are 300 bucks. But once you are inside nothing is for sale. See below.
Gifting - Instead of cash, event participants are encouraged to rely on a gift economy, a sort of potlatch. You bring what you need, but while you are about camp, if you need something, you can go in and ask for it at another camp.
• Decommodification - No cash transactions are permitted at the event in accordance with the principles of Burning Man. They mean that shit too. If you tried to offer money for a beer or something else, they would just be like “no money, just ask the playa, it will provide”. Later on, while trying to procure weaponry with which to fight off the craziness of the night, I would throw all the money in my pockets out onto the playa, demanding it give me something in return. We’d later adopt the philosophy that, what this really meant was that you would get what you needed from the desert, not necessarily what you wanted. Even later, we’d say fuck that, we’ll just take whatever we want. We’d call this the somalian Pirate approach to burning man.

• Radical self-reliance - Because of the event's harsh environment and remote location, participants are expected to be responsible for their own subsistence. Since the LLC forbids any commerce, participants must be prepared and bring all their own supplies with the exception of the items stated in Decommodification. The two things Burning man sold were coffee and Ice.

• Radical self-expression - Participants are encouraged to express themselves in a number of ways through various art forms and projects. The event is clothing-optional and public nudity is common, though not practiced by the majority. Bullshit, everyone is naked, and heaps of them are beautiful.
• Communal effort - Participants are encouraged to work with and help fellow participants.
• Civic responsibility - Participants are encouraged and assume responsibility to be part of a civil society in which federal, state and local laws are obeyed and communicate this to other participant. Another bullshit rule to help keep the law at bay.
• "Leave No Trace" - Participants are committed to a "leave-no-trace" event. They strive to leave the area around them in better condition than before their arrival to ensure their participation does not have a long term impact on the environment. Basically this barren land that had turned into another planet would again become just barren land less than two weeks after we left the place. Pretty Amazing.
• Participation - Burning Man is about participation. This would prove the most vital concept of Burning Man.
• Immediacy - Participants are encouraged to become part of the event, to experience who and what is around them and to explore their inner selves and their relation to the event. We immediately felt the need to be ready for whatever, down for almost whatever, and we knew to beat down the desert was going to take some doing.
Ten Years ago I would have run out here in the Desert with sixteen cases of PBR and some psycolbin, and I would have died in three days, of dehydration and exhaustion. I’d have turned to beef jerky out here like a big burly Whitney Houston. I was smarter now though. I had to think about this. By the time we made camp, I’d downed six Gatorades. I wasn’t touching the beer till sundown. We’d upped our tent. Bill and I drug ours across the country and would be sleeping in it side by side. It was twice as small as everyone else’s, and probably half as sturdy. I didn’t know how we’d fit in there at night, all restless and wasted, but figured that was for worrying about later, not now. Sandstorms were brewing. It was early afternoon. Somebody handed me a brownie. Nothing was left now but to go explore this place out here.

Why it Burns

Pt 1


For several years now, my older brother has been prodding me to come to his neck of the woods to try out a festival called burning man. John has played as important a role in my life as any one person has. He pulled me out of the ditch when I was really down in it, and even before that he had been busy flying me all over the country, wherever he happened to be working at the time, to see different time zones, and experience different climates and cultures, and he's just awesome and I just can't even say enough about how much I love him and look up to him. James Brown said "damn right I'm somebody" and if I am somebody, then John is the reason for that, and that is a debt that I will never be able to repay. That said, I don't know why it took three years for him to convince me that heading out into the Nevada desert, onto some barren assed government land that we blindsided the Indians with, for four days with 50,000 mostly naked crazy people, was a good idea. Used to I would have just gotten on the nearest plane and went. But when I said yes and he sent me a ticket this year, I was scared. I like to think I’m as tough as the next guy. I’ve been down more than a few dark roads in my life, and come out the other side. Bones Heal and chicks dig scars right? But I’m domesticated now. Situated in a zombie proof loft, upstairs in the city with two mortgages, and three dogs, and a wife who I adore, and I’m out of shape all of a sudden and almost 35 years old. He’s 47 though. Successful with four kids, a big house , and nice cars. Fuck it. I said Fuck it. But I didn’t mean it.

Pt. 2.

The Playa. Pronounced Pli-ya. That’s what they call it out there. The Playa. I talked a friend of mine into going. A tall lanky red head, Irish as a fucking pint glass, and so skinny he looks like he couldn’t survive a hacky sack being thrown hard at him. He’s a meaner-than -cat-shit lawyer though, a former soccer star, and one of the only single friends I have left. He was certainly the only one willing to fly across the country and get into this mess with me. He’s been doing that Rosetta Stone thing you see on late night TV, trying to learn Spanish, and every time someone mentions the Playa he tells me that means “ the beach” in Spanish. “La Playa means the beach in Spanish”. My head pressed against the window, I don’t give a fuck. We’re in a loaded down Ford F -350 packed to the gills with ice, beer, and enough North Face flair to choke a fucking mountain. John’s friends, Ted and Dennis, are in another F350 loaded down just like it, behind us. We finally round the right curve, after hours of driving through nothing, and I see it sitting out there in the middle, Burning Man. The Playa. It’s cracked white dirt as far as you can see, forever. And then beyond that there are illusions of things you might see and waves of heat rising up into the sky and tens of thousands of cars parked perfectly in a half circle. I don’t know if we have enough to survive. Not for four days. This is not the fucking beach, in any fucking language. I mean maybe a million years ago something swam down here in this flat spot in the mountains, but now I could only imagine a couple of scorpions living out here. Hopefully in some aquarium in some poor ass Indian trailer somewhere, because I wouldn’t wish this land even on a scorpion. The Beach. If this is the beach then I’m a fucking rainbow. This was dirt and heat as dry as a fucking dinosaur turd. I needed a hat, I needed a fucking turban, Maybe I could sleep in the truck. Jesus. This is something Evil Kneivel would’ve want to race across in some stupid speed feat. Only he’d hit a sandstorm and die an early death out here. We turned onto the beach and formed a line at the gate with a hundred other cars, some of them covered in fur and welded and glued together look like rabbits. I thought needlessly about Bear Grylls.

A Sign reads in the middle of the nothing desert reads.
If You…
We pass it by then another reads;
Believe In…
Another;
Creation..
Then another;
Then You Are Stupid…


Nano Bites ….
Will Take over ….
The world….
Bill Gates Said that.

There ….
Is ….
No Such …
Thing ….
As Jesus….

I’m From Vienna, Georgia where People put hands in the dirt and pray. People put their hands in the dirt and pray for rain, pray for crops to grow, for cancer to go away, for people to just stop dying, they pray to Jesus just for any sort of pain to subside. Now, I realize this isn’t unique to Vienna, but these signs lined the road going into the Playa, and I couldn’t stop thinking about my hometown. Trying to explain this to a bunch of folks in Vienna was going to be like trying to explain what Saturn is like to a blind coyote on the wing of an airplane. People weren’t going to think of me the same after this. I wasn’t going to think of me the same. When I’d tried to tell mother about the art of burning man, I imagine she saw scenes of Macrame, and Pottery set up there by little people on the roadside. It was nothing like that. It looked like Tina Turner exploded out here. And I’m not just talking about the Mad Max Beyond the Thunderdome kind of Tina Turner.. I’m Talking about the ike hit me but I’m still the baddest black bitch alive and I make music and dance and I’m fucking sixty Tina Turner. I could see people in the distance walking about. Some of them looked ten feet tall out there walking on some sort of robot feet covered with fur. I couldn’t really tell. But the tires kept rolling forward and the desert kept on opening up. A never ending expanse, that calls itself a radical experiment in self reliance based on art in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada. Today this was the third biggest city in the state. 50,000 people were in there, doing God Knows what. Who were all these people and could I kill them all if necessary? Was I still fast enough? When we got to the gate a naked sixty something year old man, covered with a gentle grain of hair all over his body, like a sweet little gorilla, came up to our window. He politely searched our truck for contraband(though half-heartedly) and asked if we’d been to the Playa before. When I said no, he said “Well we’ve got to get you out here in the dirt.”
Bill and I got out of the Truck. The man gave me a full frontal hug, the first time a full on ass naked penis has ever touched my body, I’m pretty sure, and he brought over a naked lady who did the same. Not the first time for that one, but still kind of odd. “We’re going to need you to lay down in the dirt, and pretend you’re making a snow angel.” Fuck it. I did it. Bill did it. Then they gave us a hammer and we hit a gong to let the masses know that two Burning Man Virgins had entered the playa. We’d crossed the into the zone. Into the Dust. Then things got weird.

Flashy Gashy

Several weeks ago, I met Shantee AKA Flashy Gashy AKA Luther Winters, a homeless cross dresser living on the streets of Macon. Living downtown, I'm pretty used to characters inhabiting my life. Really it's always been that way for me. The jugglers, liars and thieves of the world cling to me in a way most people don't and I don't deny liking that.

Anyway, To talk to Shantee is like listening to Little Richard and Ike Turner at once. Our first conversation went something like this.

Shantee: "Hey Baaaby, when you gone buy me a baked potato?"

Me: "A baked potato?"

"Yeah baaaby, I love baked potatoes, I been waiting on a lady to bring me one but she ain't done it"

"I mean, I love baked potatoes to baby, but I don't really know where to get a baked potato right now."

"Honey, everyone has baked potoatoes, let's go get one."

We didn't get a baked potoato that day, but the last few weeks I've spent learning more and more about her. I thought about how difficult it must have been for her, already a black gay man living in the South since 1953, but she's decided to dress like a woman. When I found out that she just got of prison for murdering her lover in 1994 with a butcher knife, I was of course even more intrigued. She's sweet, fun loving, never asks for anything (except that baked potatoe that first day) and I just couldn't imagine her killing anyone, but sure enough she did. And she's done her time and paid for it, but I want to know more. And as I learn it, I'll post it here for you.