I casually stood near the man getting as many glimpses as I could. That what I had and what he had both went by the name penis seemed like a scientific fallacy. A house cat and a lion may both technically be felines, but you can only adopt one of them at the local pet fair. I couldn’t imagine there was a woman in the world for whom this penis would be a “one.”
I forwent full nudity, not only because of shyness, but for comfort and safety reasons too. A lot of men at Burning Man were way too cavalier with their wangs for my taste. On construction sites in the real world people wear helmets and steel-toed boots, but here I saw a guy pounding nails without so much as a jock strap. And what about penis sunburn? My penis had seen less direct sunlight than a vampire and I wasn’t going to risk him turning to dust.
Not all my wanderings were dedicated to schlong gazing. When I returned to the Temple in daylight I could see the walls were covered with photos of departed loved ones, messages scrawled on the wood, and little tchotchkes of significance. At the end of the week, these things would burn with the Temple, providing psychic release for the person who had placed them.
A Nerf football served as the conch as people took turns sharing stories of loss, heartbreak, and death. When they’d finish, usually in tears, there’d be cheers of support, applause, and group hugs. It felt like a combination AA meeting–funeral—so, you know, not so fun. And I was at Burning Man for fun. But I stayed for a while anyway. Despite my initial apprehension, I listened intently as people talked about suffering and loss and the healing nature of being “home.” I didn’t laugh or make snarky comments, even when a man went on and on about the death of his pet snake, Mr. Slithers. The pain and openness in some of the stories moved me to tears. Instead of getting drunk and watching topless girls gyrate, I was here, taking some spiritual medicine, and feeling better for it.
(This was my only trip to the Temple—the rest of the week I chose the gyrating girls.)
* * *
Between the drugs, parties, and new friends, Burning Man was living up to all my expectations. Except in one important way: I was not having sex. Before Burning Man I assumed it would go something like this:
Burning Man Official: Welcome to Burning Man. Just a couple questions for you. Did you bring your penis?
Me: Yes, I did.
BMO: Perfect. Head that way and you’ll see a pile of naked, horny hippie-chicks all waiting to be sexed.
Me: Just a heap of women waiting to have sex with me like some sort of fuck-pile?
BMO: Exactly. A fuck-pile. You can’t miss it.
But there was no fuck-pile. No orgies. No sex at all.
The problem was that sexual encounters at Burning Man were always now-or-never scenarios. Without cell phone reception or internet, there was no meeting up later. Over the past year I’d become good at getting numbers and asking women out online, at setting up dates, but I hadn’t pulled off any one-night stands. At Burning Man they all had to be one-night stands and the feat was even harder because I’d have to convince a girl to have sex with me on an air mattress covered in sand in a yurt I was sharing with three other dudes.
I came close to having sex a few times, but it never worked out. I danced with one woman for an hour before she introduced me to her husband (great guy). Another woman licked my nipple after I served her a daiquiri, but this was just Burning Man’s version of a tip. A beautiful young woman had me drink from a large golden goblet and asked me to frolic with her, but completely forgot who I was within ten steps’ worth of frolicking.
About five days in I finally managed a kiss, but after twenty minutes of making out, my partner needed to tell me something.
“I came to Burning Man with my boyfriend.”
“Oh, do you guys have an open relationship?”
“I don’t think so.”
I figured I could round I don’t think so up to NO.
“Have you been together a long time?”
“Yeah, seven years. We live together.”
Instead of returning to kissing, we talked about her relationship. Thanks to my emotional support and insight, she stopped making out with me and went to find her boyfriend.
Despite these whiffs, I wasn’t worried, because I had a backup plan. There was a camp that threw orgies (in an air-conditioned dome) as their “gift” to Burning Man. At the Orgy Dome, I figured, I could finally let my eroticism run wild and have sex wearing nothing but a wolf mask, both literally and metaphorically.
But even there I ran into a problem—single men were not welcome at orgies. Which, of course, makes sense. If orgies allowed single dudes, orgies would be nothing but a bunch of single dudes oiling each other up and saying, “So when’s this orgy kicking off? Where the ladies at?”
With my last resort a failure, I had to accept the depressing truth—I couldn’t get laid at Burning Man. Surprisingly, I was okay with this, because something more important than sex happened to me: I fell in love.
With a man.
No, I didn’t come out of the closet or discover I was bisexual. What happened to me was much gayer than that—I fell head over heels in friendship with Brian.
From Acid Monday on, Brian and I did just about everything together. We ate together. We took bartending shifts together. At night we stood side by side as we wandered from art piece to art piece and party to party. Often we’d share one beer, passing it back and forth between sips. By Wednesday we were calling each other “hubby.” Need some more coffee, hubby? Where should we go tonight, hubby? Some people started calling us the cutest couple in camp. I’ve had several good male friends in my life, but I’d never fallen this fast before.
Our relationship came to a head on Saturday night, the end of the week, when the entire population of Black Rock City (56,000 that year) formed a giant ring of madness around the Man to watch it burn. The fire started small, but grew rapidly, eating up the wooden support structure and crawling up his legs. Pockets of explosives created inferno blasts, the heat of which we could feel on our faces two hundred yards away.
Though flames engulfed the entire structure, it took over an hour to fall, another example of the tension-and-release pattern that epitomizes the Burning Man experience. The yearlong buildup, the painstaking drive in, even the EDM music—with its building verses and climactic bass drops—is geared around this dynamic. When the Man finally toppled, chaos erupted. People sang and yelled and ran and cried and stripped and kissed and prayed and danced. I threw my coat to the ground and joined a crowd stampeding around the ashes, howling up to the heavens. (I should mention I was on LSD again.)
When cogent thought returned, I was panting and covered in sweat like a werewolf who had returned to human form. Shoeless and shirtless, wearing only my blue sparkle pants and a matching bow tie, I couldn’t help but laugh. Matteson Perry from Fort Collins, Colorado, how in the hell did you end up in the middle of the desert, dressed like a freak, and tripping on acid? It wasn’t a feeling of guilt, but one of excitement and pride. I had really done this thing.
I spotted Brian through the smoke. I had to tell him how I felt. I ran to my hubby.
“Brian, before the drugs wear off, I need to tell you that I love you.”
I’d never told a man, other than my father, that I loved him before. I’d loved male friends, but I hadn’t ever said it out loud in total sincerity like this. I grew up in the sort of macho Middle-America culture where you don’t express emotions so boldly. It wasn’t cool to lean over during a football game to say, “That touchdown was almost as special as you are, bro!”
But it felt good to say it, right to say it, a step away from the fear I’d always had of losing control, of being vulnerable.
Brian choked out, “I love you too,” through his tears. Hubby’s a bit of a crier.
* * *
Not long after, I persuaded Alenka and Brian to climb a large structure made out of a cargo net to watch the sunrise. As we sat shoulder to shoulder in the giant hammock, an Australian girl asked if we wan
ted some chocolate with mushrooms in it. It was 6:30 in the morning and we’d been up all night on drugs. We didn’t need anymore. Nonetheless, we each took a piece of the psychedelic candy bar. Some people believe drugs are like laundry and shouldn’t be mixed. Those people are boring. Though their whites are probably whiter.
“I swear there was a word I knew before I came to Burning Man,” I said. “It had two letters and meant the opposite of ‘yes.’ ”
“I haven’t the foggiest,” Brian said.
A few art cars were still crawling around the Playa. Mountains, invisible at night, leapt into place, suddenly vivid and towering over the landscape. The almost full moon hung in the sky. We watched in silence, the mushrooms enhancing the spectacle, as the sun slipped upward, seeming to gather speed as it went.
Though the sex and dating of the past year had been fun, I’d missed the closeness and connection that comes with a relationship, but I felt like I’d gotten it at Burning Man, outside the realm of romance. For the first time I truly believed I didn’t NEED a relationship. I’d come to Burning Man looking for sex, but ended up learning of its limits.
And if all this sounds like dumb spiritual hippie nonsense, well, I’m not surprised, because you haven’t been there, maaaaaaaan, so you don’t GET Burning Man.
(Sorry.)
16
* * *
THE GOLDEN GIRL
“If your tent is too hot for sleeping,” I said to Alenka, “you can join me in my yurt if you like.”
Though I’m sure her tent really was hot, my offer was not altruistic. This was my desperate last attempt to have sex at Burning Man. I know I just talked all about my spiritual evolution and how I didn’t need sex for my experience to be complete, but, come on. SEX.
Alenka stared at me for a moment, aware of the subtext. Our relationship had been platonic all week, but as we’d watched the sunrise she’d rested her head on my shoulder and I’d thought something had shifted. But she was hesitating. Maybe I was wrong. Finally she spoke.
“Okay, sounds good.”
We crept into the yurt, careful not to wake up my roommates. Alenka shed her coat and revealed her golden body. And I don’t mean “golden body” as a metaphor. Her body was literally painted gold. Alenka had dressed modestly for most of the week (by Burning Man standards, anyway), but the day before, she had visited Glitter Camp and gotten blasted from head to toe, turning herself into a walking Academy Awards statue.
She slipped into bed and embraced me, nothing but glitter and a small pair of black panties between us. We started to kiss, and the mushrooms amplified the contact, each touch releasing a ripple of tingles. We buried ourselves beneath my sleeping bag, despite the heat. It was as much privacy as we could get in a yurt that contained three other people.
Right at the precipice of sex, Alenka said she didn’t want to go all the way, which was fine with me. The touching, cuddling, and staring into each other’s eyes were intense enough. We fell asleep sharing a pillow, our bodies intertwined, the mushrooms giving us kaleidoscope dreams.
A couple hours later we got up. On my way to the bathroom, Puffin stopped me and pulled my shirt up, revealing a streak of gold on my chest.
“You’ve got a bit of glitter on you, mate,” he smirked.
After a day spent tearing down the camp, we went to watch the Temple burn. The atmosphere was quiet and solemn, much different from the night before. For the first time in seven days I couldn’t hear any techno music and no one was dancing. The crackling of the fire was the only sound and this sad sound track meant the event I’d looked forward to for a year, and enjoyed so much, was over.
Afterward, Grant and some others headed out into what remained of Black Rock City hoping to find one last party among the ruins. I wanted to sleep. Alenka announced she was going to bed too and fell into step with me. Throughout the day, we’d interacted as we had all week, as friends, but I still held out hope we could hook up again.
“So . . . this morning was fun,” she said, “but we’ve had such a great connection this week and I don’t want to ruin the friendship.”
And there it was, the classic let’s-not-ruin-the-friendship, a defense as simple, old, and effective as a moat. My quest was officially over. I’d come to a desert-drug-orgy and I was going home without having had sex once.
Before I could respond, she spoke again.
“But, I really want to have sex.”
OH MY GOD, WHAT WAS HAPPENING? For the first time in history I don’t want to ruin the friendship was being followed by a request for sex. I was like a boxer rising off the mat in the twelfth round. This fight’s not over! The crowd is going wild as the challenger comes out swinging!
“Well, then we should have sex,” I said.
“You don’t think it will ruin our friendship?”
“Those two things don’t have to be mutually exclusive. Friends can have sex.”
I could tell Alenka didn’t totally believe me, but her horniness must have trumped her skepticism because she motioned for us to enter the yurt. Logan being asleep inside didn’t stop us. We slipped underneath my shroud of invisibility (sleeping bag) and picked up where we’d left off that morning. Right as we were about to have sex, Alenka paused.
“I just want you to know,” she said, “this doesn’t mean anything.”
Lady, I’ve spent the last year severing the connection between sex and emotion to an unhealthy extent, so don’t worry about me.
“Yes, of course,” I said, “it means nothing.”
Everything; nothing; something—who cared what it “meant,” I was finally going to have sex at Burning Man. And I knew it was going to be stupendous. Powered by the spiritual journey of the week, we’d make wild desert love for hours, barking like animals, until we climaxed in some sort of tantric orgasm explosion. NOPE! I came in less than two minutes. And she thought the sex didn’t mean anything before we started.
“Are you already done?” she asked.
“It’s been a long week of looking at naked women. I’m sorry.”
In the morning I asked for the chance to try again, hoping to make up for my poor showing. She agreed and this time I was sure I’d be better, making love to her until the air mattress went flat, until her moans were louder than any music on the Playa, until she said, “I was wrong when I said this doesn’t mean anything because it means EVERYTHING!” I was going to show her the kind of man . . . OOPS. Already done. Came even quicker the second time.
“Again?” she said. “Fuck you!”
“It’s been a REALLY long week.”
Luckily for me, the sex didn’t end when we left Burning Man.
We stopped for the night in Reno on our way back to San Francisco. After dinner, Alenka told me she wanted to have sex again, so we retired to the room early, but discovered Logan already asleep in the other bed. Though we’d had sex in his presence twice already, it seemed weird outside Burning Man.
“I guess we can’t have sex,” I said.
“We can just do it in the bathroom,” Alenka said.
Well, okay, then.
Only a year earlier I was a heartbroken Nice Guy. Now I was having sex with a beautiful Eastern European girl against a bathroom counter in Reno, Nevada. I guess my plan had worked.
I lasted this time. For a while. Too long, in fact. Alenka had come several minutes earlier, but there was no end in sight for me. Though I was turned on and enjoying the sex, the physical exhaustion of the week shrouded my body like a heavy blanket and I wasn’t going to finish. Not wanting to go from the guy-who-came-too-early to the guy-who-didn’t-come-at-all, I needed to do something I’d never done before: fake an orgasm.
I started by increasing the speed of my motion and saying, “I’m getting close.” This was foreshadowing. I contorted my face into a look that says I’m-smelling-something-weird-but-also-laughing-and-I’m-squinting-because-it’s-bright-in-here-and-oh-boy-this-roller-coaster-is-fun-but-a-little-scary-too. You know, that kind of look. Next,
I shook my body, as if I’d touched an electric fence, and let out a sound one might describe as “baboon hailing a cab.”
When I’d finished my little performance Alenka peeked back over her shoulder at me. She knew something had happened, either an orgasm or a minor seizure.
“Did you finish?”
I nodded. She’d bought it.
* * *
Alenka had a few days before her flight home and decided to spend them with me in Los Angeles. During the drive down to LA, Alenka and I talked about sex and relationships and she revealed I was the first nonboyfriend she’d had sex with.
We spoke about our past relationships and what we were looking for. It was easy to be open, honest, and affectionate, as this was another Relationship with an Expiration Date, like the one I’d had with Simone in New York. I told Alenka about being dumped and the subsequent dating experiment. She spoke of a recently broken off engagement and a desire to rethink her approach to relationships.
“Maybe I should try being a slut like you,” she said.
* * *
Alenka had never been to Los Angeles and wanted to see the city, but over the next three days we hardly left my apartment. I more than made up for my two pitiful performances in the yurt.
“I’m glad they weren’t all as quick as the first time,” she said, “though perhaps I would have seen more of Los Angeles.”
In between trips to the bedroom, I had to catch up on work. As I went through the hundreds of emails I’d missed, Alenka would sit on my couch, often naked, calling friends and family or watching TV. Being back at my desk, dealing with used furniture, was a rude awakening, but having her to look at between tasks eased the withdrawal.
On the night before she was to depart, I told her I wanted to take her out to dinner at one of my favorite restaurants.
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