Burning Man 2010 - Tuesday

On Tuesday there was no dust. The rain had left the air moist, and it was partly cloudy and wonderfully un-hot.

Speaking of hot, the hottest girl in our camp (IMO) was Shauna - here's a random pic of her. Hm, I can't upload it so I'll just link - Shauna
Anyway, I walked out of my tent on Tuesday morning and saw her just standing up from leaving her tent. She was wearing a bikini bottom. She saw me and smiled and waved - it was one of the most breathtaking things I saw during the entire burn. Superhot eye-candy gorgeous mostly naked girl. I was supercharged with energy all day long from that.

We did a bit of stunting in camp, then we did some more stunting at the dance stage just up 4:30 from our camp. It was there that I stunted with an older lady (maybe 60 or so) who came up and asked if I could lift her. She was super-nervous and shaky, and she cautioned me repeatedly to be careful because her legs and ankles and feet were gnarled and twisted from past accidents. I put her through a succession of stunts, ending with a circus mount to shoulder-stand. She was ready to bawl, she was so appreciative. I was ready to bawl, too. I'm so grateful to so often be able to give people the gift of flight.

Next we circled over to Center Camp, where the stunting really took off. We met a bunch of stunters, including a guy I've been hearing about for years now - Lux. He flew some hand-to-hands, and showed us a cool twist-mount. He had Dutch hold him in a low H2H while trying to lie down - pretty sweet.

I also stunted with a blind man. His friend stunted with me first, then led him over to me. I guided him through a flag - at one point he looked a little concerned and informed me, "Um... I can't see." I had to chuckle - it was pretty obvious he was blind, and he must've been super nervous, but he did great. Watching his face as he held a blind Flag was amazing. He was really moved, and again it triggered a powerful appreciation in me that I get to facilitate that kind of emotion.

Thanks, Richard.

That night I went out for my first ramble with Dutch, Sara, Blake, Leah, Jay, Emily, and a few others - we were 8 for the bulk of the evening. Leah had some fun stuff, and it was Blake's first experience with that kind of thing. I was his trip-buddy all night, and we had a wonderful time. I can only remember a few of the things we did that first night, but it was a magical and bonding experience.

We did climb the supercool ball-on-column structure between Center Camp and the Man.

It was superfun; designed to be climbed. I really wanted to mantle up the top few rings and climb the *outside* but I'm not a good enough climber, by a long shot. So we went up the normal, inner route. I climbed around the inside of the top thingy, and then climbed down the ladder headfirst, which was pretty fun. I wanted to climb the outside part upside-down but it was a little too risky.

We moseyed back to camp eventually, around dawn. I got about 2 hours of visual-laced nap and then I was up again to prepare for stuntery. I came to Burning Man for stunting and I wasn't about to sleep through it, sleepy or no.

That first night's magic was amplified by Leah - thank you Leah! Blake and Sara and Dutch were my funbuddies. I love Sara, and I love having fun with her. Jay offered herself as my glom-buddy, and I snuggled and hugged and held her all night. It was superb - I had someone to touch and hold and be close to, without any lust or arousal. Deep gratitude for Jay! And for her boyfriend, who was okay with loaning his girl to be pawed at all night.

I bumped into Dawn as we wandered, on her people's artcar. The deal with Triceratops is tricky. Dawn's ex-husband, Nick, has been very polite to me, which is surprising. I'm New Boyfriend, and they're still divorcing and being wracked by the accompanying turmoil. They often exchange fairly vicious communications, and Dawn occasionally vents to me about Nick stuff. Luckily, I'm twice divorced plus I have years of support experience from recovery groups, and I can listen to the venom without being poisoned by it. Overall, I'm super impressed by Nick - Dawn's issues with him are personal things, not results of him being a bad person. He's displayed far less antipathy toward me than I could ever have hoped for. I have a pretty darn high opinion of the guy.

I also have some pretty good empathy for him. If I was freshly splitting, I wouldn't want New Boyfriend hanging around my people and my space. He's one of the bigwigs on Triceratops, and having New Boyfriend on his art car isn't something he's likely to want. I totally get that, and I respect his space as much as I can. I don't wanna crowd his space nor his people. I see them fairly often when he's not around, and they're wonderfully accepting of me. I don't need to invade his space too much.

Unfortunately, at Burning Man that means that Dawn can either hang out with her people, or with her boyfriend. We spent a surprising amount of time together, but mostly we couldn't simply 'cause she's got her crew and she didn't really want to hang with me and my crew. Now & then she spent a few minutes with us, but the vast bulk of her time was spent with her people (and Nick). It's sad and unfortunate but it sure ain't Nick's fault. If anything I feel sad that she so often prioritizes her friends over me... but it's not at all as if I wish she'd make me a higher priority. It's like if she had kids that I couldn't be around for some reason - I wouldn't resent that at all, even though it would make me sad.

She did finally agree to transfer herself into my care, though. Mostly she was worried about leaving Triceratops, which provided an easy-to-find safe place and ride. But she ventured out with me, Dutch and Sara. I needed to re-find Blake, so I told Sara and Dutch that she was all messed up and asked them to keep an eye on her. Sara snorted at me and walked off - she's all about selfish gratification, especially when she's drunk. Dutch shrugged helplessly - he's all about catering to Sara's childish whims. By the time I got back 15 minutes later they'd totally lost Dawn. I should've known that would happen, and never left, and I was furious with myself for that.

I spent the rest of the night looking for Dawn. I circled the Raver Death Camp (aka the Nexus Pyrosphere) for a few hours, cycling back and forth between the Tower of Babel. I climbed stuff, 'cause it's way easier to be seen on a high place than to see others. But I never did find her. I assumed she'd returned to Triceratops (she had) and she was safe (she was) but I couldn't shake my worry. It was a pretty miserable few hours other than when I occasionally got distracted enough to forget about losing my girl.

I did have fun, though. Climbed on stuff, stunted some, saw lots of neat things. I eventually left with Dutch & Sara. As we crossed the playa I noticed Triceratops coming up somewhat behind us. I made the mistake of mentioning my regret that I couldn't go see if Dawn was on board. Sara set off to stop them and get on board, or at least check for Dawn. I told her not to, because I wanted to stay out of Nick's art-car, and not affect it. She told me that was stupid and walked off. I nearly grabbed her and pulled her back, but I'm not much of a person for physical restraint unless it's seriously important... and Sara's blind interference in my personal life wasn't important enough. I told Dutch I absolutely did not want Nick's art-car stopped on the playa by the drunken friends of his wife's new boyfriend. He shrugged helplessly and followed Sara. I could hear her shouting, "Is Dawn on there!?" as I booked it in the opposite direction. I was hoping to minimize the impact, plus I just didn't want to be around while something that horrified me so was taking place. I've rarely been that furious at Sara.

I followed the art car back toward Triceratops camp, and hurried ahead to be in Dawn's tent when it arrived. Instead it didn't, and I laid there for a few hours until it *did* arrive, after the sun had risen. I was in a terrible place by then. :( I was worried sick about Dawn, plus upset that she consistently chooses to heavily use with her "healthy habits friends" instead of spending time with her "unhealthy habits boyfriend". Not so much upset at her... I think it's good that she's able to choose friends over boyfriend, instead of acting out of obligation. But it's still painful and upsetting, even though I'm glad that she's choosing what she wants rather than what I want. I was also absolutely furious with Sara for infringing on Nick's art car after my vehement protests. Plus I was exhausted and I knew I needed my strength but without resolving where Dawn was I couldn't sleep.

So when Dawn came in she wanted to talk and process and snuggle but I just wanted to make sure she was okay and then go back to my tent and try to crash for a bit. I knew there was no way I could sleep in her camp with all the angst I was going through, and I really didn't want to process at her camp, a few feet from dozens of her friends. Public drama is not something I cope well with, when it's avoidable. She, however, wanted to talk and process and vocalize stuff. I asked her a few times not to, but her need was a lot greater than my requests, so I just froze up and endured as she talked and talked. Almost everything she said impacted me personally, as if she was trying to hurt me. I knew she wasn't, of course, but I simply couldn't process each new "attack" fast enough to avoid the next one. After about an hour I was ready to burst into tears, scream at her, or simply sprint away into the playa and curl up somewhere blessedly alone and without antagonization. I finally convinced her to let me leave, and it was okay that she came with me - we were out walking through BRC, talking about what we were seeing instead of trying to process. That was fine. And that's how Wednesday began. :)

One of the things that Dawn said that really hurt was, "I figured you'd abandoned me so I went back to my friends." It's good to know, but it's painful. I'm terribly overprotective of people I care about, 'specially when they're messed up. When she didn't see me she immediately figured I'd abandoned her, but instead I spent the rest of the night looking for her and agonizing about where she was. How can we be in love if she assumes I'd ditch her so easily... I don't think she knows me very well, nor that she has a very high opinion of me. And a lot of that is my fault - I sell stupid avidly as a habitual part of my interactions, and almost everybody buys it up quickly. Of course she buys what I sell her, even though I don't mean to sell it to her. So that angst was of my own making, and I'm working through it.

Okay, enough about Tuesday. :) I do want to call out that on Saturday I stopped by the Temple for half an hour or so, and had a good cry about all the sadness and other "negative" emotions I'd been stuffing until I could deal with them. It was very healing and healthy, and I didn't take any of the caustic, poisonous stuff with me away from Black Rock City.