Living the Romantic Comedy

Wanted: Romantic Comedy Heroines (Or Not?)

Bonobos and chimpanzees have never loomed large in my critical thinking (except when trying to understand the primate-like sex appeal of Colin Farrell), but while contemplating from afar the strange spectacle of Jessica Alba being forced into klutz-dom in this weekend's latest (evidently hideous) romantic comedy release, an interview with primatologist Frans De Waal in the current issue of The Believer brought these monkeys to my attention.

I'll explain.  First, a brief review: in case you've been out of the country for the past few years, the  romantic comedy genre has been hijacked by a progression of man-boys, led by hearty scout leader Judd Apatow.  From "About a Boy" through "Wedding Crashers" to the recent "Knocked Up," we've witnessed an ascension of major slackers and shlubs into the pilot's seat of what used to be  sophisticated female-driven vehicles. 

This has been much remarked upon, notably in an astute "What have we come to?" essay by David Denby in the New Yorker, but what's been less analyzed is the "How did we get here?" issue, and with it, a posing of the relevant question, "Where are the women?"

I've asked here on occasion who the next Julia Roberts might be, and why there doesn't seem to be a "new Meg Ryan."  Now I'm beginning to think that the problem isn't so much the absence of a young female star who could fill those high heels (candidates are ubiquitous, from Rachel MacAdams to an on-the-cusp Emily Blunt) -- it's the apparent absence of interest, on our contemporary culture's part, in seeing an old-fashioned screwball-type strong female heroine on the screen.

Screenwriters, in this regard, are canaries in the cultural coal-mines.  We tend to receive our concepts from the present-day ether.  Just as a rash of sci-fi and horror pics in the late Fifties clearly articulated America's ambivalence and dread about both nuclear power and the Red Menace, it seems that nowadays we're seeing male point-of-view romantic comedies starring dudes who back in the day never would've gotten the girl, as an unconscious reaction to, for lack of a better word, feminism.

Hillary, love her or hate her, has a good shot.  Women, glass ceiling considerations aside, are occupying traditionally male roles in nearly every walk of professional life.  The idea of a two-career household is commonplace, and men having to answer to a female boss in the marketplace is no longer a screenwriter's comedic reversal.  In this heyday of on-line dating, the original gag that powered the screwball era -- woman pursuing man -- is simply no longer funny.  Is it any wonder that today's gender role-confused man would seek refuge in the kind of wish fulfillment fantasy that has gorgeous, sexy, well-salaried Katherine Heigl fall for a no-account nonentity like Seth Rogen?

Note, too, that today's romantic comedy heroine, while superficially an idealized romantic object, no longer has teeth.  A Katherine Hepburn, Carole Lombard or Rosalind Russell wouldn't even look at a Seth Rogen, let alone date him, and if he got in her way, she'd most likely annihilate the poor schmuck with the kind of witty one-liner that poor Ms. Heigl isn't allowed to utter.  As Denby points out:

The perilous new direction of the slacker-striver genre reduces the role of women to vehicles. Their only real function is to make the men grow up. That’s why they’re all so earnest and bland—so nice, so good. Leslie Mann (who’s married to Apatow) has some great bitchy lines as the angry Debbie, but she’s not a lover; she represents disillusion.

This reflection of our cultural moment -- the dearth of witty, powerhouse rom-com heroines as a result of women's increased power in a formerly man's world, stands to reason -- that is, until one remembers that the romantic comedy genre has traditionally been one that appeals to women.  Fine to see 40 Year-Old Virgin, et al, as the new paradigm for a date movie... except, isn't the woman the one who supposedly picks the movie for the date?

Why, then -- and this question was recently put to me by a journalist who'd just seen Good Luck Chuck, the aforementioned Jessica Alba pic --  is the current rom-com heroine in a more traditional (i.e. female-driven) romantic comedy such a ditz, a klutz, such a frazzled, helpless Old School damsel in distress?  What on earth makes the movie's (male) screenwriter think that this is the kind of leading lady that today's female audience wants to identify with?

What I theorized for her gained some ground when I read a fascinating article in this Sunday's New York Times: "Putting Money on the Table" byAlex Williams tells a sobering tale of women who, earning more than the men they go out with, have to pretzel-ize themselves into some pretty awkward positions if they want to have their date and keep him, too.

So as not to flaunt her own salary, Lori Weiss, a 29-year-old lawyer in Manhattan, has found herself clipping price tags off expensive clothes she buys on shopping binges, or hiding shopping bags in the closet just so men she was dating would not see them lying around and feel threatened by her spending power.

“A lot of guys don’t want to admit they have a problem with it,” she said, referring to income disparity. “They don’t want to be ‘that guy.’ But I think it’s ingrained.”

She said one boyfriend “wasn’t too comfortable with me paying for things” on dates, so to make him feel better, she would surrender to his wishes. The two would just “stay home and cook, or just get something cheap,” she said. “We’d skip a movie.”

Women said the income disparity becomes obvious in all facets of dating: where you live, what you like to do for fun and how you travel. It often comes down to minimizing who they are — successful, focused women — with their dates, who may be lagging a bit behind.

Maybe a girl interested in a guy, going to see a romantic comedy on their first or second date, might think twice, if concerned about his feelings, about picking a movie that puts its heroine in the power position.  The article bears this out with another interesting insight:

Although these women often say it is men who have issues around their higher salaries, sometimes it is the women themselves who are uncomfortable with the role reversal.

...The discomfort over who pays for what seems to be not really about money, plain and simple. Instead, it is suggestive of the complex psychology of what many of these women expect from their dates (for him to be a traditional breadwinner) and what they think they should expect (Oh, I just want him to be a nice guy).

On a first date at a lounge in Hell’s Kitchen, Thrupthi Reddy, 28, a brand strategist in Manhattan, watched her date down several cocktails to her one, then not even flinch when she handed the waitress her credit card. Initially miffed, she recognized her own contradictions.

“You wonder if you’re being a hypocrite,” she recalled, “because all date long I’m telling him how independent I was, and how annoying it was that men wouldn’t date strong independent women.” (The relationship ended after six months.)

Reading the whole of Williams' piece made me wonder if Jessica Alba's klutziness wasn't merely the product of bad movie thinking.  Is it possible that today's more independent and successful woman has a different kind of wish-fulfillment fantasy?  Maybe they want to see a rom-com that stresses its heroine's vulnerabilities, so she can, once again, be rescued and taken care of, in the manner of The Way Things Used To Be.

The Believer's interview with De Waal talks about how bonobos, as opposed to chimpanzees, are not an aggressive species of monkey, and how the study of them has upset prevalent anthropological theories.  Bonobos don't kill, De Waal explains, and:

Female bonobos collectively dominate the males, which probably also helps control aggression.  So it's a female-dominated species, and a very sexy species, none of which fits the thinking of mostly male theoreticians.

BLVR: You tell a funny story in Our Inner Ape about a lecture in which you described the failure of male bonobos to fight and establish dominance over the females.  An audience member raised his hand and asked: "Well, what's wrong with them?  What's wrong with these male bonobos?"

Funny, yes, and very telling about the confused male and understandably conflicted females who came next in our evolutionary line.  Apparently until the whole of us as a culture can deal with our current paradigm shift, we won't be able to have real-deal rom-com heroines on the screen. 

Or maybe I'm just out on a limb reaching for one totally contrived banana.  You tell me why you think Seth's such a happy camper, while Ms. Alba's taking pratfalls.  Living RomCom wants to know.

This Cliché Must Die

...It happened again this morning.  Just when I thought it was safe to read another romantic comedy screenplay, out of the dark, brackish backwaters of its third act, the horrific rom-com Cliché That Will Not Die reared its monstrous head, jaws spread wide in a sickening grin.

Boy has lost girl, and where has she gone?  Where-oh-where, do you suppose?  That's right, my little rom-com chick-o-lettes.  And learning of this, what, pray tell, whatever does the poor boy do?  Can you possibly imagine?  Yuh-huh! 

HE RACES TO THE AIRPORT TO STOP HER FROM LEAVING BY DECLARING HIS LOVE.

After I threw this spec script across the room (where the wall is peppered with little dent marks from the brads that have hit it before) I sat for a moment in contemplation of the scene that must have transpired behind this scene.

I pictured the screenwriting team in their office, seated behind dueling lap-tops, working diligently, sweatily, caffeined-ly into the night (or at least until after rush hour on the 405), trying to come up with that killer ending, the one to assure their ascension into the  Screenwriting Hall of Fame.  They've tried this, they've tried that, they're banging their baseball-capped heads against their flat-screens in desperation, until Scribe 1 turns to Scribe 2 with a mad genius gleam in his eye.  "I know!" he cries.  "She decides to fly off to Paris after all, and he--!" 

It's at this point in my fantasy that a screaming 747 drops on their office, but on second thought, it's too kind a fate.  These screenwriters should be bound and gagged in a room with 100 incessant car alarms for a week, forced to watch Gigli on an endless loop, made to listen to further tales of Billy's fun at Burning Man (Hey, campers: ready for Virgin Burns Part 4?!) -- at the very least this is the moment where Bill Goldman and Bob Towne should bust down the door flashing their Guild badges and revoking these guys'  license-to-scribe.

Because, I mean, how?  How is it possible that in September 2007, any screenwriter who hasn't recently been lobotomized thinks that it's viable, nay, permissable to end a romantic comedy with a race to the departure gate?  The mind reels.

Even the parody of same has been done, done, done.  From the neat tweak pulled off near the end of Alice Wu's Saving Face (Girl races to airport to declare her love for Lesbian Lover, Lover goes "Sorry, babe," and gets on the plane) to the reductio ad absurdum of Richard Curtis's Love Actually (in which everyone in the entire cast shows up at the airport), knowing satirical spins on this cliché are already rampant. 

Meanwhile, what continues to confound me about this routine is its complete lack of grounding in real life as we live it.  Of course movies embody fantasies, but come on: have you ever rushed to the airport to stop your lover from boarding a plane?  Do you know anyone who has?  And if so, did it work?  Earlier this summer, writer Ken Levine did a funny post on how an actual race-to-the-airport climax might play out as an entire movie, noting how a few simple realities (parking?  use of a cell phone?) could render the entire proposition absurd.

This movie ending is preposterous.  Its over-use is ubiquitous.  Yet as if trapped in a recurring nightmare, we cannot escape.  They're still writing these scenes, they're still shooting them.  Why, Romantic Comedy, why?!!!

This question was actually put to me just the other day by a journalist doing a blog column about rom-com heroines and the clichés embodied in their portrayal, and for once, Mr. Rom-Com was stumped.  I could only posit that screenwriters who are intellectually challenged (and the studios who enable them) must believe that they're supposed to write such obligatory scenes -- as if the romantic comedy genre was so severely codified that contemporary audiences would be unhappy without an airport race climax.

We know that's not the case, here in the Year of Apatow, where the romantic comedies that willfully go against the traditional grain are the ones reaping millions, while same-olds tank with numbing regularity.   Still the cliché persists, and I find this most mysterious and perplexing.  So I put it to you, my sagely Living Rom-Commers: Why do you suppose this romantic comedy inanity refuses to die? 

And is there any way that we the public and pros and produced-writers-to-be can kill it?  It's not just the fate of our genre at stake, it's my sanity: there's only so many thrown-screenplay spec missiles my wall can withstand, before my mind snaps and I'm writing one myself, brain-dead as the next rom-com zombie: every good boy stops flights, every good boy stops flights, every good boy...

 

 

Virgin Burns 3

[The continued adventures of a first-time Burner at Burning Man 2007, 3rd of 3 posts]

The Premature Immolation

The one thing any newbie knows about Burning Man is what the climax of the event will be.  All week long the Man, made of wood and dressed in green neon tubing, sits atop a structure in the center of Black Rock City, awaiting the climactic ritual when virtually all the camp's inhabitants gather to cheer his burning.

Monday night, our first night on the Playa, Tater, Lisa and I go out to see the total lunar eclipse, an astonishing show presented gratis, in the spirit of the Man, by the cosmos.  Our bright white full moon is gradually devoured by the Earth's shadow until it's merely a dark orange button hanging in the sky.  Given the mind-boggling array of luminous Burner folk trolling the Playa below, it's a sci-fi vista; I've been drop-kicked onto another planet.

We're back in our campgrounds before the moon begins to reappear, toward 3 a.m., and I'm puttering around the truck, still unloading bags, when I hear a woman run into a nearby tent, exhorting her boyfriend to get up.  "The Man's on fire!"  I assume it's a prank, but then I hear someone else saying the same thing, so I walk over to the circus grounds to see what's what.  Weirdly enough, the Man who was glowing green only minutes ago is now a fiery orange.  I return to the dome to report this to my veteran companions, telling them that it seems the Man is burning.  Tater and Lisa roll their eyes and assure me this is impossible.  Billy the virgin is just so gullible!

But more people are running out of the campgrounds.  I take another look from the edge of the Esplanade and see it for myself: the Man's indeed aflame, smoke billowing from his head.  I run back to tell Lisa and Tater and at first they still refuse to believe me, until I'm standing outside the dome, yelling, "The - Man - is - burning!  Get out of there now!"  We rush out onto the Playa, where fire engines have already encircled the Man.  Water sprays the towering figure.  Tater and Lisa are agog ("This has never happened before!").  We join the expanding circle of on-lookers being held back by rangers, and watch the fire finally put down as Burners cheer.  The Man has upstaged the moon.

Later, we learn this has been a deliberate act of arson committed by a veteran burner from San Francisco named Paul Addis, apparently mounting a Dada-ist protest against the ostensible rigidity of this one-time wholly anarchistic event.  Arrested, he's being held in the nearest town lock-up, and by the next day "FREE PAUL!" grafitti is ubiquitous around the Playa.  I'm now a privileged member of a historical elite: this is the first premature burning in the event's 24 years.  For days afterwards, I get to tell people, "I'm no virgin.  I've already seen the Man burn."

Benificent Infernos

I fear the actual Burn on Saturday night will be anti-climactic.   The ceremony seems over-elaborate, with its ritual fire dancers performing in a large ring at the reconstructed man's base followed by a panoply of firework pyrotechnics.  But at last a torch is lit to the Green Man's feet and the man is burning for real.

What is Burning Man?  The mind can't really comprehend it when you're in the midst of it, the sheer size and intensity of the event confounds understanding.  But you stare at the Man burning and the experience obliterates rationality, all you know is the profound rightness of what you can't tear your eyes away from.   It has to be a man, and the man has to be burning.

I realize it's our Man -- he is us -- he's everybody's man to be whatever anyone wants him to be.  And he's also mine, personally, I'm remembering my visit to the Man last night, strolling around the massive wooden pyre underneath him, listening to the taped sounds of jungle noises and suddenly hearing, amidst the calls of rainforest birds, a pre-recorded whisper: "Hey, it's Burning Man.  Does this make me look fat?"  The Man made me laugh, and now he's ablaze, his arms up in the air, looking weirdly jubilant in his demise.

At the moment when the Man is fully lit, there's a massive orange fireball, a huge mushroom cloud of exploding propane gas, the Man gone nuclear -- and the city goes bonkers.  I hear the by-now familiar refrain from Tater and Lisa ("They've never done that before!") but I'm speechless, wide-eyed in the cheering, the crackling -- the raw primal pull of fire.

Later that night the Oil Rig blows, with another hydrogen bomb-like effect.  But these are penultimate burns.  The next and final evening, Sunday, we go to the Temple of Forgiveness, an exquisitely carved wooden structure resembling a tiny Oriental ivory chess piece magnified a hundred-fold, to hear the Reverend Billy (of the Church of Stop Shopping) give a sermon, bless us and perform a lesbian marriage.  At one point he refers to "our fellow burner, Jesus Christ."  It gets a laugh from the crowd but seems absolutely apt.   

The Temple is filled with grafitti and momentos left by people forgiving those close and those departed from their lives, the living and the dead, in messages written on the walls that'll go up in flames for week's true finale.

This night's burn is quieter, less show business.  It's a meditative fire.  You can feel the force of thousands of souls contemplating all the forgiveness that's ascending heavenward in the spiraling smoke, dust devils dancing in its wake.  Like so many of my fellow burners, I've left a message in the Temple.  I'm a part of the Burn, and now it will always be a part of me.

The Gift That Keeps On Giving

The Playa gives you myriad gifts, so many of them paradoxical dualities.  Burning Man lets you let go with wild abandon even as it propels you into intensive introspection; it gifts you with anonymity, yet forces you to confront who you really are.

We're on the road home, hours from Black Rock City, paused in the little town of Lee Vining for lunch, when we spot an SUV that's as covered in dust and mud as our truck is.  The Burner driver is a talkative registered nurse from Colorado.  We're happily dishing about our respective past week's adventures when I realize I have to run an errand and excuse myself, saying I need to get bandaids at the store.  "Bandaids?" the woman asks.  She opens her trunk and fetches a box from a well-organized bin.  "How many do you need --two, three?"

The Burn continues.  Spirits willing, it'll never really end.

Virgin Burns 2

[The continued adventures of a first-time Burner at Burning Man 2007, 2nd of 3 posts]

The Ever-Present Glow

One thing I learn from serving food to 250 people: no matter who someone may be -- fire-eater, acrobat, clown, rope-rigger or ringmaster -- they all want more mashed potatoes.

Tiring as it is, it's an uplift to be a giver.  And I get the necessary second wind (third or fourth winds are par for the Playa) so I can get to the meat of the Burn day: the night life, which kicks in after sunset and isn't over at sunrise.  And for all the rumor and expectation of mind-altering substance abuse, I find I don't need great doses of anything to get with the program, because the night itself is psychedelic.  Everyone traversing the Playa at night wears things that glow in the dark, so as not to be run over by a bike or mutant vehicle.  The whole plain is dotted with rainbow fluorescence -- people decked out in El-wire bling, LED displays, glo-stickery.  It's like being inside a vast animated three-dimensional black light painting.

We're walking across the Playa towards 2 a.m. when headlights find us and I hear an amplified yowling. A giant velveteen cat some ten feet high is chasing after me, its front claws opening and closing like pincers.  We run, shrieking, and then admire the big cat as it motors by.

Art cars (mutant vehicles), the only autos allowed to roam the grounds at will, are cars or bigger buses and flatbed vehicles that have been transformed for the event. There's one in the shape of a giant glowing head, another that replicates a cruising shark, but this is just small stuff.  The big art cars are motoring parties on wheels, like the full-fledged two-masted pirate clipper ship that sails slowly across the desert, half-naked nubiles dancing from the second story rigging as a DJ spins techno.

You can climb aboard such vehicles when they park and befriend a group of strangers, or bike alongside them like minnows in the wake of a whale.  Just be aware that jumping out of one in motion is a dangerous proposition.  Better to wait for your ship, UFO or monster bunny-mobile to dock at the Temple of Forgiveness,the Diva Boot Camp, the Devil's Workshop, the Dancing Trees...

Heavy Weather

The sky is clear, the sun is shining, and suddenly the wind rises.  About three minutes later, we're surrounded by a mini-tornado whirling dervish of dust so intense that, holding my arm out in front of me, I can barely see the ends of my fingers.  Everything is white.  Hence the goggles, the scarves, the ubiquitous face masks.  As every veteran Burner knows, these "white-outs" can come upon you at any time, and they last anywhere from ten minutes to ten hours.

The first one catches us in camp.  Tater and Lisa and I dash between our tents and our geodesic dome, covering and battening down everything that could blow away.  Then Tater, seeing that I'm more exhilarated than alarmed, leads me out into the thick of the storm.  I'm Laurence in Arabia, or Admiral Byrd amidst a warm polar snow blitz.  We cling to each other, stumbling onto the circus grounds while figures emerge and float off into the grey-white fog: a Goth girl on her studded bike, an antlered mountain man with walking staff.  Then things are flying through the air, people yelling.  There's a loud scary clatter very close by and we huddle for protection beside an RV, laughing.  After the storm, the twisted metal carcass of a decimated car port lies only yards from where we were, lifted and thrown clear across half of the campground by the wailing wind.

Ooohs and Art

The artworks and exhibitions, too numerous to be seen in toto, are scattered over nearly five square miles of Party Town.  There's grandiose: a towering sculpture built out of two twisted oil tankers, welded together like a great metal lazy-eight infinity figure for tiny humans to climb and swarm over.  There's small and canny: a human skeleton leaning casually against a lamppost with a da-glo cigarette dangling from its teeth, the lamppost actually formed by the long legs of a dark female figure holding a bronze earth globe, poised to drop upon the blissfully unaware skeleton's head -- a perfect metaphor for the human condition, 2007.

Two of the most popular pieces deserve return trips.  One is a large metal zoetrope raised high above the ground featuring a ring of static monkey figures which, when people man the ten bicycles encircling it on the ground below, begins to spin; when the peddling tipping point of energy is reached, a strobe light hits the revolving monkeys and they animate, seeming to jump and climb from vine to vine.  The second is the breathtaking Cubatron, made of 6,720 lights powered by solar panels, which blink into dazzling computer-controlled eruptions and waves of color.  People sit around it, welcoming each new shift like The International Choir of Stoners.  Ooooooooh, we go as the lights appear to revolve at rocket speed.  Suddenly they explode and rain down like lava.  Ohhhhhhhh! cries the choir.  The lights shimmer, dance, abruptly fade.  Wow, intones a solo voice, and everybody laughs.

The Kids These Days

A certain knowing self-consciousness permeates the festivities, an extra-arch awareness that redefines one's sense of contemporary camp.  A parody of the Black Rock daily newspaper that's like Burning Man's version of The Onion (called The Shroom) makes the rounds only a few days in, with a typical headline reading, "Update: Couple That Fell in Love at Last Year's Burn Sadly No Longer Together."

Inside the Shady Acres camp, a large tent pyramid has its floor entirely carpeted by astro-turf, this in itself a kind of meta-gag about the Playa.  A young couple lounges in the center of the fake grass like punkish fairies, she lithe and neon-lavender haired, he short-cropped and piratical.  I overhear her telling him about her favorite joke; she tells it six times a day and it cracks her up every time.  "What's the joke?" I ask.

"A man walks into a bar," she says.  "And he's an alcoholic and he's destroying himself and his family."

It takes me a moment to understand, and all I can do is nod.  I realize I've just heard my first genuine post-post-modern joke.  It's the irony beyond irony, a gag about gags: the sound of a younger generation thinking That's... funny?

Go Naked

By Day 4 my jeans are trashed and I'm wearing my girlfriend's mini-skirt.  It's so comfortable!  Why don't more men wear skirts?  I discover as well the joys of carrying a purse, slung over my shoulder with the requisite water bottle.  It's another impressively utilitarian device, though I comprehend why a purse with compartments is way preferable.  How do you women find anything in there?

Going half-naked is the norm, and one sees the occasional beauteous full Godiva peddle by.  It's not just the heat, the dust storms, the lack of showers, but a general air of anything-goes innocence.  Some men strut full commando; women routinely go bare-breasted but with decoration: pin-wheeled nipples, trompe l'oeil lily pads, mini-propellered boobs.  I see more piercings in a week than I have in a lifetime.

The climax of all such female exhibitionsim is the annual Critical Tits bike ride, which zooms through camp on Friday afternoon.  Women bare their bosoms and bike down the center of the Playa, delighted men with mouths agape lining the way, cheering them on and spraying them with water.  The  women ride like benign Valkyrie, grinning and yelling and celebrating themselves, the glory of wizened pendulosities, the perk of young itty bitty titties.  This joy-wheeled parade is anything but obscene.  It's another part of our utopian dream.

[Tomorrow: the Man burns]

 

Virgin Burns

[Adventures of a first-time Burner at Burning Man 2007, in 2 or 3 posts to be published over the next 3-4 days]

Queen for a Moment

We hear this story from a friend.  Out on the Playa, where tens of thousands of late night desert party people play, a group of dedicated pranksters set their sights on a woman entering one of the PortaPotties.  As soon as she locks the door behind her, they spring into action, and about three minutes later, this random stranger steps out to find a red carpet unrolled at her feet, triumphal music blaring.  Lit up and cheered on by two dozen people she's never met, she's led up the carpet to a platform where she's crowned with a tiara and served champagne.

Such is "the gift economy" that motors Burning Man, a place where there is no commerce (with the exception of one concession stand for coffee and health drinks at Center Camp, the only thing you can buy is ice), and your value as a human being is measured by your capacity for generosity.

Ring Them Bells

When we arrive at the gates after a 12 hour drive, one of a long caravan of vehicles that have passed the signs lining the way bearing slogans that speak to this year's "Green Man" theme (one says, "If you were really green, you would've walked here"), we pull our overloaded pickup truck up to one gate where a pink-haired matron in overalls distributes event books and maps and necessary advice for me, the newbie: "If you get tired and cranky and out of sorts and you decide you don't want to be with these people you came in with?  It just means you need to drink more water."  (One motto of Burning Man, I later learn, is "always piss clear.")  Then she has me climb atop the big brass bell hanging by her station and bangs it with a big stick as I ride. 

My honey Tater -- a veteran of some 11 Burns over 14 years --rushes from the truck to tearfully embrace me as I climb off.  Then I gong the bell myself, yelling (as instructed), "I'm a virgin no more!" while other drivers and passengers applaud.  My greeter gives me the traditional greeting ("Welcome home!"). Virgins used to be routinely spanked upon entering, but to circumvent lawsuits, she presents me with a "Spank Me" coupon, which I redeem later that night.

Life on Mars

The event takes place in a Black Rock Desert dry river bed north of Reno, where not even a bug lives on the thickly dusted hard clay surface.  The city that's built virtually overnight on it and then totally dismantled eight days later is constructed as a giant circle.  Picture a long playing record album where the label area is some three square miles of open space -- that's the Playa, the huge playground, liberally littered with fantastical art pieces one can walk, bike or mutant vehicle motor to, where the 40' high Man himself resides at the center, awaiting his ritual sacrifice at the week's end.

The band between our record label and the end of the record's last song is the Esplanade, ringing the center circle with 24/7 clubs, discos, and other theme camp exhibitions, including a replication of NYC's Astor Place subway stop, complete with revolving cube, station kiosk, park bench and Manhattanite lamp posts.  The 10:00 and 2:00 ends of the Esplanade house the loudest, hottest dance clubs, blasting techno across the Playa till dawn and beyond.  At any given moment out on the Playa you're hearing a bizarre cacophony of a dozen different musics, creating a white noise wall for your confused ears to process.

The concentric circles radiating out from that Playa center are the campgrounds, from street A to K, where the tents, domes, RVs and all manner of surreal crash pads reside.  Tater, best friend Lisa and I are part of the Red Nose District, camping with a circus company whose big top sits on one of the far ends of the Esplanade, so we're only one ring behind the main action; it's like living a block behind Times Square during a week-long Saturday night. 

One morning around 5 a.m. -- after going to bed with a flame-throwing art car parked outside our tent -- Tater and I wake up not because the music from the circus tent is so loud but because the ground is vibrating and shaking so hard from that music.  Some deranged DJ is pounding out a repeated drum-and-bass melody that corresponds to no known earthly scale or rhythm, and even in my half-conscious state, I'm intrigued.  That's new, I muse, unzip the tent flap, put on my Playa boots and pad half-naked to the PortaPotty.  Just another Burning Man dawn.

The Obligatory Life-Transforming Ephiphany

At the Tea House, an elegant Oriental tent pitched out on the Playa, the Tea Master pours freshly brewed teas in small cups from his perch at the center of the circular bar, which is ringed with a clientele resembling denizens of the first Star Wars movie who found the bar there too obstreperous.  It's a place many people come to chill after a long night's revelry, some couples sprawled on cushions in the corners, canoodling.

A man comes to the tent opening.  "I don't know, I don't know," he announces.  "I'm either in this body -- and what I see is real -- or maybe it's all in my head!  And I could be discovering the meaning of my entire life -- or this could all be bullshit -- I don't know!"

He babbles on for a bit, the Tea House customers smiling and nodding, before the Tea Master speaks.  "What's your name?"  "Milan."  "Milan, come in and have a cup of tea.  Relax.  Take it easy."  "Okay, okay," says Milan, stumbling into the tent, "but I don't know -- I want to believe this is reality, but then, what if it's only my reality?  I don't know."

"Milan," the Tea Master interjects.  "You'll work it out.  But you have to take your shoes off to come in here.  Okay?"

Milan does as he's told, still talking.  A guy in a long kaftan robe lounging on the floor behind us is quietly chuckling.  "There you go," he says.  "Even in your moment of enlightenment, you have to take your shoes off before you come into the tent."

The Tea Master has poured a cup and passes it along the bar.  "This is Milan's tea," he says.

Living the Gift Economy

In spite of the depleting heat, the daunting dust storms, the massive sleep-deprivation, the Playa gives so much more than it takes away.  Tater and I are walking down an outer circle street, tired, hot and cranky.  "I'm hungry," she says.  I look to my right, where a tarp is stretched by the side of the road with Snack Food Glory Hole emblazoned on it.  There's a duct-taped hole in the tarp ("Place Mouth Here"), and someone on the other side, informed that Tater is vegan, feeds her a mystery snack that turns out to be delicious dried mango.

We walk on, feet leadened by midday heat, and suddenly behold a water slide that's just been completed.  Naked and half-naked people are climbing up a 20' ladder to the top of this makeshift wooden chute, a slide that drops you down a 70 degree-angle, spits you into a flat straightaway, then dumps you into a pool (where you're requested to kiss the rubber duck).  Tater strips down and climbs up first, despite a fear of heights, and I follow.  Zooming down the water slide is the definition of a rush.  We emerge entirely reinvigorated, dripping with new leases on life.

There's only one more thing one could ask for, and that shows up later in the afternoon: a bearded man in a top hat carting a cooler on wheels, proffering vodka tonics.  A hose attached to the cooler has as its nozzle a plastic red penis which Mr. Top Hat calls "Rick."  Stimulate Rick and he'll give you something nice.  We blow on Rick and tell him jokes and he gushes vodka tonics into our plastic cups.  Hungry-hot-tired-thirsty no more, we bicycle onward, ready now to cook and serve dinner, gratis, to some 250 circus folk.   

[to be continued]