horizontal at The Temple, sunrise. Burning Man. Image by Julian Milo. Black Rock City, Nevada. August 2018
This was my first year at Burning Man. That means that I was a “virgin.” That’s what they call newbies: virgins. In a way, I love it, because it reminds me of what Marcia B., co-founder of Cuddle Party said, when talking about a different sort of party altogether — a Cherry-Popping party.
The idea is that “each person has an infinite number of ‘cherries’ that can be ‘popped.'” We all have sexual experiences that we’ve heard about / seen on video / imagined / salivated over … that we haven’t viscerally, corporeally taken part in yet. THEREFORE, we have thousands upon thousands of virginities to lose. (How exciting!)
On my virgin journey to the playa (in an RV the size of a train car), while we were paused in the entrance line, Fenix briefed me on something very important, something that nobody had mentioned in all of the unsolicited advice I received about the burn, none of the YouTube videos I watched on my late-night deep dives down the Burning Man-prep rabbithole covered. He said that lots of people have an emotional meltdown on Wednesday or Thursday — so, not to be surprised. It’s a part of it, he seemed to say. Almost a tradition.
My new dear friend, Fenix. At the wheel. Black Rock City, 2018
Wednesday was my big day. To lead our speaker series at Camp Mystic. To dress like a Golden Goddess. To facilitate my Intimacy Games workshop.
Leading Intimacy Games in my hand-bedazzled hat and golden goddess Claudia Pink top. Camp Mystic, Burning Man. Image by Myka McLaughlin. Black Rock City, Nevada. 2018
I cultivated such a sweet unfolding of the 30 participants through exercises drawn from theatre, Circling, AcroYoga, Authentic Relating, and intentional communities.
We practiced the basic units of Circling, did a wee bit of partner yoga, led each other on Blind Walks, raised each other in the air (I call it Flying Magic Sleep — we managed to work our way up to flying the bases, strong folks who are usually called upon to lift and support everyone else!), created a Touch Gauntlet (sometimes called an Angel Walk), began intimacies with the sentence “If you really knew me you would know…”, put someone who was longing to / afraid to be seen in the Hot Seat, and passed each other along on a human Conveyor Belt.
Conveyor Belt! Camp Mystic, Burning Man. Image by Myka McLaughlin. Black Rock City, Nevada. 2018
I felt… power, pride, expanse, compassion, sensuality, turn-on, glory!
The Hot Seat. Camp Mystic, Burning Man. Image by Myka McLaughlin. Black Rock City, Nevada. 2018
So I thought, “Maybe it’s not going to happen to me. Maybe I’ll just have a lovely burn!”
Not 3 hours later: huge meltdown.
After I finished facilitating the last talk of our Camp Mystic Speaker Series, I changed into a white swimsuit. For White Wednesday. (I’m gonna need to step it up in the white clothes department.) Then I went looking for a campmate that I’d been flirting with. He wasn’t at home. Then I went to our Truth & Beauty party. A sea of white in our theatre, a theatre that I had helped build. I felt intimately acquainted with the ladders and walls: ladders I’d climbed dozens of times, walls that I’d put up with a staple gun and zip ties. Only Mystics were allowed to go up to the second floor of the theatre. I went up, feeling a sense of belongingness.
I looked across the way, and my unrequited crush and his girlfriend were sitting together on a champagne-colored sofa chair, dressed like a King and Queen. I tried not to look at them. I tried to watch the performers. After a few minutes, they climbed down, made their way through the crowd, and, hand-in-hand, left the theatre.
They’re going to fuck, I thought. SIGH.
That was the best seat in the house, so I went and sat in it. No sooner had I sat on the throne that I realized, like an electric shock: I’d forgotten Mirelle’s wedding, AT WHICH I WAS SUPPOSED TO BE MAID OF HONOR. It was at sunset, all the way across the playa.
The time was now 10pm.
Reeling, I climbed down from the second story and made my way through the crowd, trying not to make eye contact, trying to get out quickly, holding my forehead.
And in the foyer, just about to walk into the theatre … was the guy I couldn’t find earlier.
“Hi!” I said, ready to throw my arms around him, to weep and be comforted, to tell him how I’m not the sort of person to forget my friend’s wedding, to figure out what to do.
“I heard you’ve been looking for me. I want to talk to you,” he said.
“Are you going to say something that’s going to make me cry?” I asked.
“Probably,” he said.
“Let’s go to my RV.”
“No,” he said. “That’s too intimate. Let’s go to the dining hall.”
“I don’t want to cry in the dining hall!”
But that’s the only place he would agree to, and now I felt I had to know what he would say, so that’s where we talked. Our dining hall had mattresses and pillows around the perimeter. We sat on one of those (interestingly enough, the same one on which we had cuddled with a friend a couple of nights before).
He proceeded to tell me that, while he was energetically drawn to me, every time I got physical, he wanted to pull away. Energetically drawn to me, but physically repelled. I received it as a second shock to my system. (He was also coming up on acid. Really not an ideal time to have this conversation, but.)
I had deliberately turned away from my infatuation with the King-with-a-girlfriend and turned toward this guy because I felt him to be open to me, and I was drawn to him, and I didn’t want to make the same mistake I made in San Francisco on my road trip —becoming so attached to the longing for the unavailable man in a group that I couldn’t accept the romantic comedy in front of my face. I was trying to be open to the person who was open to me … and almost as soon as I did so, he started pulling back.
“Are you saying that you’re not physically attracted to me, but you’re trying to dance around saying it, because it’s uncomfortable?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said.
“Ouch,” I said. “Ouch.”
“And you’re so masculine,” he said, “that you put me in my feminine, and I’m not comfortable there. Every time you lean in to kiss me, I pull away, because I want to be the one who does that.”
“I WOULD PREFER THAT,” I said.
I cried. It wasn’t really about him.
In fact, the night before, when we cuddled alone, I turned my head away from his mouth. His breath smelled wrong to me. I wasn’t certain that I was physically attracted to him either! (“When was the last time you brushed your teeth?” “I’ve had tobacco?” “Why?” “Because I like it.”)
I certainly didn’t lust for him. But it stung deep. It stung me in the part that has chased the unavailables all my life. It stung me in the part that worries about too-muchness and not-enoughness. It stung me in the part that wonders why I haven’t found My Man yet.
I was weeping on his shoulder. Not sure how long I wept. Long enough for my nose to drip and drip and not have anywhere to go but my hands. I got up to look for a tissue.
“Can we wrap this up?” he said kindly. “I think I need my own space for a bit.”
The day I left Burning Man. Black Rock City, Nevada. September 2018
When I went back to my RV, a stranger was sitting in the living room and the whole place was rocking violently with somebody else’s lovemaking. I avoided her gaze and went into the bathroom. Closed the toilet lid. Sat on it. Stared into space.
“Do you want to tell me about it?” Zhana asked, clad in her dancing clothes, poised to go out.
“No.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to tell me a little bit about it?” she asked again, because she knows me.
I told her the gist of it. The RV started shaking again, side to side. I almost had to steady myself on the sink so I didn’t fall off the toilet. I wasn’t ready to laugh.
Zhana said, “You need to not be in this RV right now. You can go to the Temple. Go to the Temple. It’s quiet. There’s no music there. They have places to sit. Everybody there is in a similar place as you.”
“Ok,” I said, and didn’t move.
She offered to bike me there and then go on about her night of dancing.
“Ok,” I said.
She left the bathroom. I tried to gather myself up.
“Lila?” she said after a few minutes.
“Just go if you’re impatient!” I snapped. “It’s gonna take me a minute!”
“I’ll wait for you,” she said, “I’m waiting for you. I just wanted to know what was happening.”
She kindly ignored my rudeness and biked me to the Temple, then went on about her night.
The Temple, Sunday, the day it burned. Black Rock City, Nevada. Burning Man 2018
There was no place to sit except the dust, and even in my meltdown state, I didn’t want dust buttprints on my shiny spacesuit.
horizontal with “You Might Die Tomorrow” at Burning Man.
(A momentary lie-down for a photograph is one thing; sitting in alkaline dust for an interminable cry is quite another.) “You Might Die Tomorrow” (So Live Today!) was created by Kate Manser, leader of guided deathbed meditations. This was my favorite piece on the playa, and there was no shortage of glory there. Black Rock City, Nevada. 2018. Photo by Julian Milo
The Temple was magnificent, and close up it revealed itself to be a marvel of 2 x 4’s and ratchet straps. The altar at the center was ringed with silent respect. I went to the perimeter of The Temple, where the 2 x 4’s met the dust, because I knew I wouldn’t be able to purge what I needed to purge unless I wasn’t worried about disturbing people’s prayers with my sobs.
I crouched at the edgemost point that was still inside the Temple, and purged my tears. I soaked through the foam around my goggles, through my dust scarf, and kept sobbing until the wave let up.
I could feel someone near, but I didn’t know how near. When I looked up, in the stillness between the waves, I saw a kind, round, blond woman crouched in front of me. She hadn’t touched me the whole time; hadn’t imposed herself on my experience. She was just there, witnessing, holding. When I looked up, she offered me a tissue and her hand. I took both.
“It’s hard sometimes, isn’t it,” she said in a German accent.
I saw us from the outside for a moment, and what I saw was this: a German woman comforting a Jewish-looking woman in a nondenominational Temple. The image heartened me.
“Would you like a hug?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said.
We stood up and she took me in her arms. She stayed with me while my sobs turned to cries, and my cries turned to whimpers, and my whimpers turned to gasps, my gasps turned to ragged breathing and my ragged breathing became smooth again.
And then she said, “I can feel that things are going to be better for you.” And with words of reassurance, she took her leave.
Thank you for that gift.
After she left, I sat (sort-of).
I perched by wedging part of my butt in the triangular gap between a few 2×4’s. It wasn’t time to leave yet.
I sat and thought. I actually cannot remember the last time I simply sat and thought for a long time, without trying to figure it out or write it down, without my phone, without closing my eyes, without talking to myself or someone else, and without despair.
I sat and thought of a part of a quote. It was the second part, I thought, but I couldn’t remember the first part … and I supposed it didn’t really matter. The part I kept repeating to myself was:
It repeated like a mantra in my head.
the grace with which you let go of that which is not meant for you
the grace with which you let go of that which is not meant for you
I have been so ungraceful.
How many times have I done this? I thought, Hurt myself on men that were not meant for me?
“What’s wrong with your dog?”
The neighbor, without a glance up from their farmwork says, “It’s sittin’ on a thumbtack.”
“Why doesn’t it move?”
Neighbor pushes back their hat, chews their toothpick, thinks on it a sec, and says, “Doesn’t hurt enough yet.”
Now it finally hurt enough.
I am a person who shows up for my friends. Yet. I did not show up to my friend’s wedding.
I got off the thumbtack.
Phrase it differently.
I will only move towards men who are moving towards me.
I took a Sharpie from my bag and wrote on a leg of the Temple:
Then I wrote this in my burn journal:
? o’clock. 12am? 1? 2?
the temple
I wish to gracefully let go of what is not meant for me. (I will know what is meant for me by its ease.)
I will stop moving towards men who are moving away from me.I will only move towards men
who are moving towards me.
Today, I missed Mirelle’s wedding. Completely forgot about it. I was focused on moving towards a man who was moving away from me. No more. No more.
My first dust storm, Burning Man. Black Rock City, Nevada. 2018
And then I rode through a dust storm, to find Mirelle. Sometimes I couldn’t even see the Man. I was riding towards what I thought was 8 o’clock. I asked an art car for directions, hoping that, under these conditions, they wouldn’t give me orient me incorrectly in the spirit of mischief. As it turned out, I was now at 3 o’clock.
“You need to turn around,” they said.
I retraced my route, trying to stay between the lampposts. Headlamp around my neck, I had my own pool of light. It reminded me of that E.L. Doctorow quote, “Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”
I made the whole trip that way. Once at her camp, I stripped half my snowsuit off, sweating, panting in relief. I found someone who knew where her tent was. The tent was dark. I figured I’d leave her a note begging her forgiveness.
Then I heard a little rustle. Or did I?
Just in case, I said softly, “Mirelle? Are you there?”
“Yes!” said a tiny, muffled voice. “Who’s there?”
“It’s Lila,” I said, crying with regret and other things.
“Lila!” she said, delightedly, and opened the flap to her tent.
I got partly on my knees and said a portion of the Hawaiian prayer, “I’m sorry, please forgive me, I love you.”
She said, “We changed the time of the wedding! We made it earlier! We were worried aboutyou! Fiona missed it, because she came at sunset, as we had originally said.”
I couldn’t have made it anyway!
“Oh, Mirelle,” I said. “I’m so sad that you’re seeing me now! I’ve been so joyous for the past week!”
“It’s okay,” she said, wiggling in that breathless, puppyish way of hers, “You’ll be joyous again! And then you can come back! Or I’ll see you at home!”
All was forgiveness.
My last day at Burning Man. Letter art by Olivia Steele. Photo by Valeria Reinosa. Black Rock City, 2018
I decided that I wasn’t going home that night. Biking on Esplanade (the main drag) during a dust storm seemed inadvisable, so I set off to ride on A, and wound up riding on B.
I saw a Taj Mahal tent with an open flap and warm yellow light pouring from inside. The sign read, “Magic Lantern.” I passed it by, then doubled back. I removed my shoes, and crawled inside. The tent was ringed with carpets and pillows and a curious assortment of antiques.
A drunk man in a loud hat stood behind a bar full of junk.
“Greetings. Would you like to play a game?” he asked.
“That depends. I’m very weary,” I replied. “What kind of game?”
He said, “You spin the wheel and pick a prize. Then you tell us a story. If I like your story, you get the prize. If I don’t like your story, you have to eat a stale peanut.”
I laughed in delight. Just my kind of game!
“We have researched all of the things that preserve freshness in peanuts … and we have done the exact opposite.”
“Deal,” I said, picked out a hammered golden choker, the finest thing on the table, and spun the wheel. It landed on “Playa Magic.” I told them the story of meeting Jesus on the plane, the hotel room gift, the purple man, the drunk scientist, the accidentally stolen bike, the tequila with He-Man, the wrong address for the party, and re-encountering Jesus in the middle of H. (The whole tale is told in pictures on my saved Instagram stories labeled “BURN.”)
I finished, and he and the couple next to me said, “That’s a great story!”
The girl who just came in said, “I don’t want to follow that!”
I said, “Oh, please don’t worry, I’ve been training to tell stories since I was seven!”
The fellow next to me, whose name turned out to be Squirrel, read my tarot cards and gifted me a tiny vial of playa dust (which I cannot find… I hope it did not go the way of my three pairs of sunglasses!). It was still a few hours until sunrise. At sunrise, the symphony was playing at the orb. I made it my goal to get through the night and make it to the symphony.
I mooshed some pillows around, pulled my galactic snowsuit hood up over my head, and dozed off.
A couple of hours later, there were different folks in the tent.
“She’s awake!” one of them said.
With a hint of sheepishness, I put some listerine strips in my mouth and reapplied my lipstick. Told them another story, and they offered me another prize.
“That’s okay,” I said. “But thank you! I’m going to the symphony now.”
At the orb, the band was slightly out of tune and moderately out of sync. But it didn’t really matter.
The dawn was powerful.
This was a sunset, but you get the idea. Burning Man. Black Rock City, Nevada. 2018
When I arrived home around 7am, everyone else was still out for the “night.” Went to take a shower on the truck and someone called out, “Lila!” It was Joy.
I said, “Joy! I had my Wednesday night breakdown, right on schedule!”
She held her arms out and said, “Give it to me. Give me your whole night.”
And I was naked and stinky and dusty and she held me and I told her I told her. She embraced me for 20 minutes and swayed and wept with me as I said I didn’t understand why I couldn’t find my person, now that I’ve done all this work to love myself and believe myself worthy of love. That I didn’t understand why I kept hurting myself choosing the men that I’ve chosen.
“I cannot wait for this time next year,” she said, “when you show up and say, ‘This is my Lion. It’s possible!'”
I told her about how I used to joke with a woman I was close to a few years ago, that she was such Wife Material. #wifematerial
Joy said, “Oh my God you should write that on your body and go walking around the playa. It’s good advertisement!”
As I climbed up to take my shower, Joy shouted, “WIFE MATERIAL TAKING A SHOWER! AND SHE’S FUCKABLE! CLEANEST WIFE MATERIAL ON THE PLAYA!”
I laughed and laughed, my voice throaty from crying and sleep deprivation.
Later that morning, when I was in the breakfast line, Joy shouted from the kitchen, “WIFE MATERIAL! IN THE BREAKFAST LINE! SMARTER THAN YOUR AVERAGE BEAR! You’ll have to tell me if you ever want me to stop. Because the joke will never get old for me.”
And that, dear ones, is the story of the Wednesday night meltdown and How I Got My Playa Name.
(For all my other tales from the playa, go here.)
