Box Camp, morning

My first full day on playa with no responsibilities, I wandered around camp—equipped with utility gloves—offering basic construction services to anyone who looked at me. I helped set a few posts, rig a couple of shades, and work on a team of six to unfold a gigantic hexa-yurt, which ended up looking like a sweat-lodge lined with reflective aluminum foil.

It was at this moment that an overwhelming sense of tribalism struck me. The social contract was written thusly: “We’re not quite sure who you are yet, but you are a member of this camp. You are with us now.”

In a “default” world, out where the American influencer meets a sense of rugged individualism, the culture is very much “me first” and/or “what have you done for me lately?” Here, it is extremely refreshing to see what a communal effort really looks like: people working together for the good of the group, even if they are strangers. No one is doing this for likes and attention (not yet, anyway), and it does seem like this event attracts the kind of person who actually wants to help.

Still, it’s nice to have a friend in camp—someone who knows you. Thankfully, I do, and one I’ve known since high school.

‘Beasy’ (BEE-zee) is one of those natural friends you make when you’re younger and they stay with you as you both grow up. A bond forged in a real, passionate common interest, and a vintage connection that can weather the inevitable life changes that slowly dissolves all friendships.

We spent a lot of time together as teenagers and young-adults navigating college—kindred spirits in our nerdy shit like D&D, punk rock, and left-leaning ideologies. We’ve even gone camping a few times before this Burning Man experience, so it’s easy for me to say that a chance to share a campfire with Beasy is a very good thing.

He greeted me with a smile and an excited laugh, thrilled to see yet another friendly face in camp.

“Hey hey, J-Rock!”

I waved sheepishly—another playa name, sheesh—and slapped the dust off my gloves. He’s standing on sandals so caked with playa crud it’s now the majority material, and wearing loose corduroy shorts that are more patches than corduroy. With arms wide, shirtless, holding a beer sheathed in a black Dead Kennedys foam koozie, he grins behind heavy sunglasses. “Glad you could make it.”

I approached his campsite and the little front porch he’s made for himself. Attached to the well-worn travel trailer, the cozy space is admirable—a humble refuge from the relentless, beating desert sun. I joined him standing outside his porch. 

“Hey, man, thanks for the invite out here.”

It was Beasy who initially thought to invite me to This Thing, and he extended the offer of a free ticket in exchange for volunteering with the camp.

“Don’t mention it. It’s rad you actually followed through.” He throws his non-drinking arm over my shoulder and turns us to face E street, as if to survey a newly acquired land.

He leans in closer, boozier, more intimate. “We get a lot of clowns out here.” There’s a long pause and a distance to his gaze, as if images of clown shows past kaleidoscope before him, painting the landscape. The horrorshow reality of no-shows, goofballs, washouts and burnouts strolling into a camp that actually expects something of them is real for Beasy, who recently advanced into a co-shift lead position—a clown show manager.

He snapped out of it. “You, though! You really showed up for it. Have you met Spritely yet?”

“I’m not sure if I’ve met anyone yet. I’m still trying to get a hang of this playa name stuff.” I wince as the mid-sky sun mercilessly bakes everything it touches.

“Don’t stress it, all that will come naturally if you just relax into it.” He beamed a smile and took a big, gulping swig of koozie insulated beer, belching loudly and with great satisfaction. “You’ll remember Spritely. Let’s head up to the Lounge.”

It was at that moment a golf cart, wrapped in string lights, came ripping down our camp’s central alley. A statuesque tanned body with wraparound shades was behind the wheel, headed straight for us. Beasy raised his beer in a respectful salute and greeted him: “Hey, Mother Goose!”

“Yo, Beasy, we gotta do a big ice run, wanna give me a hand?” Mother Goose’s deep, silky baritone was impossible to ignore.

“Hey, 404.” He halted on the breaks and gave me a look and a nod. This was one of the camp’s shift leads I hadn't met yet—he must have seen my profile in the scheduling system.

He had an air of authority and an immediate command of my respect, and I also got the sense that he was someone who’d been awake for the last 36 hours and somehow still going strong.

Beasy drained the last of his beer, withdrew it from the koozie, and set it on the hardpan playa. In one smooth motion—like a piston—he raised a leg and crushed it flat beneath a grimy sandal. He tossed it nonchalantly into a little bucket on the cart, half full with other crushed beer cans. Beasy hopped in next and, at this point, was all business. “Let’s roll.”

Mother Goose cranked the wheel and hit the gas on the electric cart, and the two whipped out the back of camp, took a right on F street, and vanished. “Catch you when I get back, J-Rock!” I heard Beasy shout. 

You learn very quickly at Burning Man that anything can happen—and when it does, it happens very suddenly.

The Unfinished Lamp Lounge, mid-day

The Box Camp common area, known as The Lamp Lounge, sat on the southeast side of E-Street facing the Man. At first glance, it was a scattered mess of dusty couches, chairs, and tables, so I spent most of the day here as it metamorphosed into the camp’s primary social gathering space. As with most of the senior BMorger Box Camp staff, a woman stood as the authority figure at the center of this construction effort. She wore ribbed black tank top, dusty black shorts, a tool belt, and steel capped low-boots. Her glossy gunmetal mirrored shades rested low on her face with an effortlessly cool look, and her long black hair was pulled back into a heavy braid. Her final accessory was her lanyard with official Burning Man ID, which labeled her as ‘Spritely’.

She also had a confident air about her, much like Mother Goose, that led me to believe she was clearly the one in charge here. So I dove in. What better way to participate than to offer the use of my two idling hands?

“Need any extra help?”

“Yeah! Sure!”

“What needs to be done?” I asked with complete naivety.

She directed me to a whiteboard leaning against the lounge’s bar. On it were a batch of projects in various states of completion. She offered exactly enough guidance on what needed to be done and how to do it, her forewoman skills providing the direction necessary to utilize my construction naivety. Spritely—embracing that role of dust-covered Valkyrie—took charge with a claw hammer looped in her belt and an inscrutable air of confidence. This was her domain, and I was grateful she welcomed me in with a front seat for all of it.

Back out beyond the trash fence in the “default world”, there’s another approach to management that is the antithesis of Sprightly’s. Out there are the “hands-on” leaders of the world, micromanaging every single detail, always keeping their workers under a close watch and under an oppressive thumb. When forced into these kinds of relationships, I always wonder: what’s keeping the managers from doing the work themselves? I mean, they’re standing right here, they don’t seem to be comfortable allowing me to do it on my own, and this is not a job two people can do simultaneously. They maintain a hover in their positions of authority, scrutinizing every detail, but never actually get their hands into their work gloves, so to speak.

Not here, though. There will be none of that today. Spritely’s whiteboard still has tasks on it, and a flow of workers—myself included—willing to get the job done.

. . .

Fatigued from working on Lounge projects but nowhere near ready for a nap, I found myself craving a one-on-one conversation. I sat with Spritely beneath the reinforced shade and got to engage with this queen of the dust. Of course, this is the kind of intimacy readily available at Burning Man, where anyone can be your new friend and everyone’s front porch is open for socialization.

We talked about relationships, human behavior—not soft small talk, topics with actual teeth—and, without our sunglasses in those moments of real eye contact, I could feel the subtle microdose of oxytocin ripple through my brain.

Maybe this is the kind of drug people are doing out here. Have I never looked people in the eyes before this week? Do people in the default world not make eye contact? If there’s one thing profoundly magical about Burning Man so far, it’s that everyone’s eyes have this glistening spark in them, like they know something about you—like they’ve seen your soul before somewhere else, and they’ll treat you with a familiarity that is profoundly comforting.

I like her. Not in a lust-struck way, but with bashful, aw-shucks admiration: “Well, gosh, miss, I admire your character and I’d sure like to be friends with you.” And in this moment, underneath the shade and out of the broiling sun, Spritely gets a glimpse of the real me—the character behind the character I’m playing.

I feel flooded with all-purpose love after this gentle conversation and leave the coordinator’s shade soaked with a good feeling.

So far this trip has been a dive into a fantastic and surreal wonderland and I’ve only been here a day.

I toss my work gloves on an empty table and plop myself down on a long couch in the Lounge.

The hustle and bustle on all sides of the secured shade is impressive to witness, the extreme effort required to get this place from desolate lakebed to functional city is astounding. In the coming days, the town’s landscape—art and infrastructure camps with lots and lots of empty playa between—will become fleshed out with tens of thousands of more bodies willing and eager to jump into the fray. The early city is just in its infancy and is very alive and growing.

Inner-Playa, sunset

To further decompress after a day building the Lounge, I found a space between the radial arc of the city’s main street, Esplanade, and the rest of the inner playa where I can be alone. There isn’t a soul for about a quarter mile. I take a moment to meditate and an off-playa vision of happiness drifts into my mental view: A cup of tea. A long vista at sunset. A comfy chair for reading books. A furry animal companion.

And also water. I slipped out of the meditative trance to notice the serious bodily need. I need water.

Currently, I possess just one of those things: the sunset vista. It is spectacular. My view of it is unobscured as it paints the haze of the windy dust a shimmering gold with salmon-pink highlights. The mountain ranges, depending on their distance, pick a tone between navy blue and steel gray. The sun is bright and warm and there are fifteen minutes of it left today. I try to make the most of it, legs folded, butt in the dust. As the sun sets on the chaos of the growing city that surrounds me, a scattering of howls erupt from this lakebed desert. Hit with a sudden and intense urge to join them, I lurch my head back and try to summon a mighty howl. Instead, it comes out cracked and feeble—I sputter and choke before I get half an “Awooo!” out of my throat. I will not howl tonight, it seems.

Water. I left my water bottle in camp, and I forgot how dreadfully thirsty I was. A parched, cracked throat makes for a parched, cracked howl. 

The intensity of this grand carnival makes the default world seem like a faraway joke—a nightmare of hustle culture, internet-hivemind, loathsome 9-to-5s, and an anti-social “kill or be killed” mentality. And people who don’t look each other in the eye, I guess. Out here, the living feels more like a game, and once you get your ticket scanned and cross the fence, you’re in it—no opting out. Back in the default world, it’s certainly perceived as creepy if you’re caught gazing into someone’s eyes for too long. It’s insane to burst into a wild howl at any time of day. Out here, though, without a doubt these little things feel like ritual, and just something These People do to feel like a member of the big ol’ human tribe, participating in something that is deeply, animalistically human.

With the setting sun comes the dark and with the dark comes the cold, and I’m not dressed for the change. But, in the stillness of this pre-event sunset moment, I felt pure, unadulterated peace. And then, as if the playa itself remembered to fuck my burn just a little bit, a single fine grain of sand lodged itself in my eye.

Dehydrated and half-blinded, I decided it’s well past the time to pack it all back to the Box Camp and to the well-lit and fully furnished Lounge.

Behind Box Camp, five o’clock somewhere

So far, I’ve been out here completely sober, and maybe that’s the element of Burning Man I’m completely missing: drugs.

My rationale for leaning hard into doing drugs out here was that if I could survive the harshness of the desert while operating on a cocktail of uppers, downers, and psychedelics, I could survive anything. The idea of maintaining as a functional adult with a brain blasted by chemicals sounded like the challenge I needed to fully embrace the Burning Man experience. That is, attaining the highest highs and lowest lows—riding every wave that life can throw at you.

“I’ll ease into it at first,” I thought, and started with a sample bouquet of the most essential, reality-altering drugs. These are available for discount prices over the counter at every single supermarket, gas station, and corner store: caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol.

Personally, I’ve had my battles with alcohol throughout my twenties—binge drinking—and I still wrestle with the idea of “social drinking”, easily coaxed by a friend or friendly stranger into just one more. For so long, that kind of behavior was the norm in my social circles. Drinking and smoking were standard practice; to abstain was to deviate from what everyone else considered normal.

But now, my body doesn’t tolerate indulgence the way it used to. Hangovers are crippling and my willpower isn’t always strong enough to stop at just one or two. Too often, one drink turns into several, and I end up in that same familiar spiral.

That’s the trouble with loops: How do you break a pattern that’s been hardwired into your behavior? How do you untangle yourself from the circular logic that feeds your vices? Is it possible to become conscious of the code that governs your habits, or does it just hum along quietly in the background of your life, unexamined and unbroken? Being stuck in a loop really does feel like you’re spinning in circles; and each turn twists your perspective to becoming a little more recursive.

Alcohol abuse aside, I brought with me to the playa a handle of Fernet and a handle of Mezcal. The Mezcal seemed appropriate for the desert, and the Fernet is my digestif of choice to sip on and share with a stranger—along with their story. I’ve had nights well spent knocking back glasses with whoever happened to be sitting next to me on the barstool at the 'after shifter' bar, and it didn’t matter whether I was in Seattle or Santa Cruz. The people who’ve been living out here for a week or more before the event have been great company—genuinely good folk—and I could imagine hanging out with them at a bar or concert in Anytown, USA, doing exactly what we were doing now on the alkali flat. We've built a society where it feels totally natural to chat with strangers over an alcoholic drink, so natural, in fact, I’m beginning to wonder if there is a social circle out there that simply doesn’t involve drinking.

Out here on the playa the alcohol flows freely and regularly. All you need to do is produce your dusty cup in front of a bartender, and they’ll fill it to the brim with some potent concoction for you to imbibe, get loose, dance, and have fun. There’s something about drinking that is so inherently social, so freeing, and so compulsive. Isn’t that the whole point of it, in moderation?

Of course, after a few drinks, what better way to be social than to jump into a semi-circle of your peers, enjoy a tobacco cigarette, and have a friendly chat? In just about every bar venue in every place on Earth, I’ve found that stepping out for a smoke nearly always guarantees a conversation. They might be drunken and pointless, intense and intimate, or anything in between. But there’s always something bonding about it—whether it’s suffering in the weather together, listening to the muffled boom of a dance hall from the outside, or gathering somewhere out of the way enough that smoke can escape to the heavens and voices can actually be heard. Maybe it’s just a nicotine-fueled feeling of cool that comes from puffing on a paper stick wrapped around the addictive little leaves.

I dove headfirst into this night of social drinking with friends old and new, all pouring from the communal well of alcohol. My tolerance had eroded after years of temperance, so tonight it only took a few shots from the shared stash to strip my wheels off completely. I was loose and leaning drunkenly off playa-crusted barstools, sharing secrets with whoever happened to come close. It was a perfect session of mild-to-moderate alcohol abuse—my inhibitions falling away in a delightful skid through the night. 

As much as it was my mission to generate heavy notes about the Burning Man experience, the details of this particularly festive evening are gone now—but I think I had fun.

After the night’s heavy partying and my liver enduring another punishing rout, I staggered back to my tent and collapsed, far too drunk to remove my clothes or even get comfortable. I crumpled face-first onto my sleeping bag, sprawled across the dusty air mattress, the world spinning madly around me—until a nightmarish dream took over and re-painted the interior of my consciousness.

Interior of a tent, pre-dawn

Around the first delicate light of the early morning playa sun, I had a dream. In it, I sat by a glowing campfire in a wooded forest. Around the fire, sitting in camping chairs, are a cabal of women. I am engaged with them in conversation, chatting casually about feminism and dominance and other elements relevant to creating a successful matriarchy. They were masters of conversation, all strong, confident women, who understood how to both take charge as well as listen. I mostly stay quiet, but I would smile and nod and add sing-songy affirmations as they talked. At some point, I happily realized that I was the only male voice in the conversation, but then the conversation suddenly shifted to the topic of the mating habits of the praying mantis, and the dream took a dark turn.

The women grew more excited as they discussed the technical benefits of consuming the flesh of a sexual partner, post-coitus, and I began to sweat as I considered what that might imply for me. I remember feeling very small in stature, and the campfire felt hot against my face. I squirmed in my chair, trying to get into an un-slouched position so I didn’t feel so vulnerable. I wondered if this were some strange ritual where friendly, soft-voiced women lure a naive piece of man-meat to a sacrifice. I begin to feel light headed. I caught a glimpse of a forked snake tongue as it darted from one of their mouths. My fingers go numb as I startlingly realize that the women don’t appear strictly human. I remember reeling, fantasizing about my own impending death, stuttering, “A-are– y-ou– g-guys f-f-feeling ok?”

A woman with a bushy head of auburn hair bursts out of her chair, leaping to me in an instant. She fiercely leans into me, moving her face within inches. I could feel her hot breath: “Two of us are Naga, three are Harpy, Sarah is totally feline, and I’m a fucking wolf.” She snarls, revealing her meat-ripping canines. I gasp, but no words come out of me.

She continues. “And yeah, there’s a full moon tomorrow, we’re all synched on our cycles, and we’re trying to decide diplomatically who gets to mate you and eat you.” She stares at me directly through the eyes.

And then, tearing through space between dreamscape and reality, I felt The Kick—as if I were pulled backward off a barstool—viciously snapping out this dream of sexual cannibalism. Shocked awake and drenched in sweat, I squint into the high eastern sun, my tent already baking me alive.

Time to start a new day, this time absolutely terrified of being fucked and eaten by powerful females.