Burning Man, a Love Story
“So, how WAS Burning Man??”
Since returning from my first Burning Man a couple of weeks ago, I’ve fielded this question a lot. I’m a 48-year-old formerly respectable mother of two, and friends who’ve heard that Burning Man is just a bacchanal of sex, drugs and EDM are probably wondering how many of those shenanigans I participated in.
Fellow first-timers tell me they’re having a hard time describing Burning Man to people who haven’t gone. I get it. Burning Man is such an intensely personal experience that we fear revealing too much of ourselves in the telling. Non-burners won’t understand. They might not approve. It might confirm their already-half-formed impression of us as that friend/relative/co-worker who was always a little weird and seems to be spiraling ever further outside the norm. It feels easier to give a safe, palatable answer that satisfies their curiosity while avoiding creating too many uncomfortable questions - or worse - uncomfortable silences.
So each time I hear this question my breath catches in my chest, my stomach clenches a little, and I have to make a split-second decision: do I answer safely, or honestly?
Here’s my safe answer - “It sure was hot! I had a great time and met lots of cool people. So much amazing art! I danced all night and rode around with my friends in a beautiful desert filled with sights and sounds. People dressed up in really cool costumes, and each camp had something interesting to give, whether it was tantra classes, steam baths, or pickle juice and whiskey (which is shockingly good!). I had a great time and will definitely go back.”
Here’s my real answer, because I’m tired of being safe, saying what I think people want to hear so that they’ll like me:
It was life-changing and beautiful and really hard.
I had magical moments in which I challenged myself to go outside of my comfort zone and connected with previously unknown human beings (aka “strangers”) at a level I hadn’t thought possible.
Like naked contact improv class.
Yup, it’s just as scary as it sounds. I got naked with 8 other strangers. We danced together, melding our bodies into unexpectedly intimate positions. I had to confront my insecurities about my own body, and my judgments of others’. No, I didn’t find all of them attractive. I had to learn to connect with some of them out of love and respect for them as human beings, instead of because they were hot and I might want something from them.
I had to deal with my fear of unknown (naked!) men and what they might want from me. Turns out they wanted to free themselves from body shame and connect with fellow human beings just like I did. We shared a sweet sensuality that was not the same as sexuality. And then we left. I walked out of that tent in a state of euphoria and joy for life that most people spend their lives trying to find through drugs. (Thank you, Buster. You rock for creating this space and experience!)
But sometimes I planned on shiny, happy fun and instead got a hard life lesson.
I took [unnamed-for-legal-reasons substance] for the first time since high school. Then we rode deep into the playa to listen to music and look at art. When [unnamed-for-legal-reasons substance] took effect an hour later, I became unbearably sad, and my body expressed that sadness through an unnerving agitation. I was self-aware enough to figure out and tell my friends what I needed, which was to get back to the emotional safety of camp, and find someone to hold me.
It took over an hour to make our way home, because my friend was having the experience I was supposed to have. He would run off periodically, entranced by all the bright pretty objects in our midst. Each time we stopped for him, I sat down in the dust and reminded myself that this pain, too, shall pass.
When we got home I told my friends to leave me and go on with their evening. I wandered alone through camp barefoot, carrying my blanket, looking for someone to take care of me. He appeared quickly - a Facebook acquaintance I had met once at a party. I told him what I was going through, and what I needed. He held me for three hours, while we waited together for my sadness to pass. Then we walked arm-in-arm through the neighborhood, talking about our lives, for another two hours. We parted with a long hug as morning approached.
I am profoundly grateful to him and that experience for a lesson I will keep re-learning until the day I die: Sometimes life sucks. Sometimes you have to deal with it alone. And sometimes, when you can allow yourself to ask for help, you find someone who makes the road a little less hard. Even when you’re barefoot on a cold desert road.
Burning Man had more teachable moments in store for me. Sometimes I was lonely. Sometimes I didn't know what to do. Sometimes I wanted to do so much that I did nothing. The physical conditions of dust and heat were so extreme, and the mental stimulation of this strange new world so great, that I was forced to check in with myself almost hourly to figure what I needed in that moment. water? food? shade? dancing? a hug?
The beauty of Burning Man is that people are ready to give you anything you need, without expectation of anything in return. The lesson of Burning Man is that you have to know what you need, and be able to ask for it. All that practice checking in with myself has made it easier to ask “What do I really need in this moment to feel less sad/angry/scared/confused?”
Most of us lead a life of unconscious routine and constant distraction that discourages us from stopping and listening to ourselves. Even if we can listen, we’re afraid we’ll be judged and rejected if we express what we hear - our “worst” and scariest emotions - the ones that make people run the other way.
Burning Man gave me the gift of experiencing physical and emotional challenges knowing that there would be someone, quite possibly a total stranger, there for me if I needed help.
Some of my best adventures at Burning Man happened when I ventured out alone, leaving the safety of my friend group to see what might happen when I wasn’t afraid to open myself to the unknown.
One night I cycled off to practice my latest obsession, blues dancing. When an attractive man showed up beside me asking how to dance to blues, I showed him what I had learned in my all-of-two lessons. We danced a few dances, and he had the natural ability to move that I’m always excited to find in another person. I told him I was going in search of more dance music and we decided to continue on together. We soon found the two things I’ve loved since I was a kid - R&B music and a dance stage.
We danced for hours on that stage. He had lived in France for 13 years and recently moved back to Detroit - well-traveled but from down home, like me. We laughed. We grooved. He freestyle rapped. We slowly and intuitively increased the touching of our bodies as we danced. That moment felt like the perfect distillation of joy and possibility.
Cycling back to my camp, we heard the distant sound of Motown music, looked at each other, and moved towards it without the need for words. More dancing and conversation with great people around a fire pit. Finally, we arrived at camp. I took him into a huge tent with blankets, pillows, India prints, and a sacred frog on an altar. We kissed, we touched, we played together. We didn’t have sex, because other people were sleeping and chatting in the tent. After an hour or two of exploring each other, we fell asleep snuggling together.
The next day, as I reflected on what an amazing evening it had been, I realized that some of my positive feelings came from having a sexual boundary that left us free to explore our sensuality in a way that wasn’t goal-oriented. Even though we women have fought hard for the right to have sex without judgment (yay!), immediate intercourse isn’t always the best choice for my heart or my pleasure. Since my return from Burning Man, I value my pleasure more, and I’m better at communicating what I need to achieve it.
Trevor and I spent the rest of Burning Man together, and are now having a mad, fabulous, long-distance love affair.
Hah! Just kidding. In a moment of trying to be the super-chill Rachel I aspire to be but am not, I failed to get his contact information. When he asked, as we parted, what time I usually went dancing, I breezily told him to come find me. But as anyone who’s been to Burning Man knows, trying to find a particular person at a particular time in a particular place is madness. Did he come looking for me? I’ll never know.
In my infinite wisdom (read: desperate need) a few nights later, I tried to recreate that evening. I cycled off to the blues dancing camp. No one was there. I searched for our R&B stage but like a mirage, it seemed to no longer exist. I scanned the crowd for a tall guy with stubble in crazy leggings, fantasizing about that fated moment when we would find each other again. But this wasn’t a movie.
As I continued on, I knew my quest that night was futile. I knew it would be impossible to recreate our magical evening, and in the trying I was ruining what could otherwise be a perfectly nice night in this adventure-filled place where my time was already running short. But the heart wants what it wants, even when the head tells the heart it’s an idiot.
Even after returning from Burning Man, I couldn’t quite give up the fantasy. Persistence is my superpower, and like all superpowers, it can be used for evil as well as good. But, after a solid 8 hours of Internet Trevor-stalking, I admitted defeat.
Sometimes a moment is meant to be just a moment, to show us what brings us joy. My longing for Trevor - or, more to the point, a Trevor-like presence in my life - was a sign that I’d been ignoring a real, important need for romantic connection.
When I got back, I ventured into online dating again after a 6-month hiatus. I’m a bit unconventional and definitely not everyone’s cup of tea. So I’m being radically honest about who I am and what I want, and waiting for men who will appreciate all, or at least most, of my crazy. (pro tip - they often go to Burning Man).
It’s sometimes said that Burning Man is just an adult Halloween in the desert. But Burning Man costumes are often an external manifestation of self-expression and a bid for acceptance of that self. We’re telling people who we want to be in that moment, and asking them to love us for it.
I decided that I wanted to project a gentle, healing presence at Burning Man. I bought light, gauzy fabrics in shades of blue and wrapped them around myself. A friend told me I looked like a healing goddess, and it made me deliriously happy. She got me. I can’t go around telling people all the time that I want to be a healing goddess (oops, just did!), but I was able to express it and be recognized for it through the medium of costume.
In San Francisco (where I live), you’re allowed to wear something really off-the-wall and no one will blink an eye, or they’ll smile indulgently at you. But at Burning Man, people don’t just allow you to express your individuality. They invite you to, they want you to, they respect you more when you do. the former is a distant, you-do-your-thing-I’ll-do-mine kind of independence, and the latter is an arms-open, you-do-your-thing-and-I’ll-love-you-for-it sense of belonging.
It was hard to come back to life-as-usual after Burning Man. I was shown the potential of love. Not the Disney version of romantic Love we spend most of our energy on, but an expansive, compassionate love that allows us to meet each human being with openness and acceptance.
I felt this love every time someone gave me what I needed exactly when I needed it with no expectation of anything in return — whether it was iced tea on a hot day, peppermint oil to revive me after working in the hot sun, a hand massage, laxatives (a real godsend on day 5), dumplings, a hug, or just a smile as our eyes met in passing. Each of these small moments built on the last one, creating a week-long cocoon of acceptance that nourished a void so deep within, I didn’t know I had been starving.
Like everything in life, you get out of it what you put into it. My intention going to Burning Man was to work on my connections with other human beings - opening myself up to their imperfect beauty, loving them for it, and best of all, being loved in return. I got that, and now I’m greedy. I want more. So I’m going to find ways to bring more of the Burning Man ethos into my life. I think I’ll start with loving more, judging less, and see what happens.
Get my stories delivered directly to your inbox by sending me an email with “subscribe” in the header at rachel.ratliff@gmail.com
