gibson_ wrote:Lots of small stuff that made my virgin year completely magic.
1:00am or so, we had just gotten into the city, 3 virgins, completely shit-scared because we felt like total outsiders (at least I did), trying to make our way to where the people we were camping with were. We were driving what I felt like was a huge obnoxious truck, driving through this city that belonged to these _other_ people, shining our bright lights into their camps in the middle of the night and probably waking them up.
I just felt totally totally totally out of place and really self conscious like I didn't belong here and was being annoying on top of all of it. I felt awful. I had been excited about this magical new thing all year (I got my ticket the day they went on sale in January, and then spent the entire year reading every piece of text I could find about Burning Man), and here I was, ruining it for people by blasting them with my headlights and driving my annoying truck through where they were walking.
Some guy runs up to the truck and sticks his head in the window.
With a big smile he says; "Welcome home! You're almost there!"
Total. Total. Total. 180 degree complete perception flip.
Just that feeling of...like...fuck, these people don't hate me at all... (my eyes are actually welling up right now typing this, ha...weird). Welcome _home_? "Home?" Me? Home?
--
Another was when we were walking through the city one morning and some guy saw me and my two friends out in the street. He gets up from his couch, runs out with a huge smile on his face to ask us what we were doing.
"Oh, just checking stuff out, you know..."
"Huh, cool, is this your first time here?"
"...yeah."
**HUGE** smile, followed by a gigantic hug for each of us.
"Welcome home. You made it."
Goosebumps.
Seriously that _type_ of feeling. "Hey, we really like you by default, and we're all really glad your here.". That's completely *not* something I experience in my day-to-day life. Those couple of experiences were absolutely stunning to me.
And this is why reading some of the stuff I'm reading right now, how people are so upset at some of the virgins because they are somehow not worthy. That hurts-- I hope every single virgin that comes into BRC this year gets to feel that amazing 50,000 person-strong hug that my friends and I got to feel.
Other small stuff was: walking out to the trash fence. Turning around and just seeing total anarchy behind us.
My trike didn't survive the dust so well, so I was riding my friend's bike a lot with her on the handlebars. One night we were cruising around (me pedaling, her on the handlebars) and started singing silly songs (to the tune of glory glory hallelujah)
"I saw two hippies on the playa...
I saw two hippies on the playa
saw a bunch of art cars on the playa
and it was really fun"
--repeat, adapting the "saw a bunch of art cars" to match whatever it was that we were seeing at the time--
It's making me all nostalgic now thinking about it, but riding around with two friends one of them on the handlebars of my [actually her] bike, smiling from ear to ear singing made up songs in the middle of the night surrounded by flame throwers and dancing people and totally insane art cars blasting music. My god. There is nothing better than that.
Oh! And at about 3:00 and the esplanade, sexy Santa Claus read us a bedtime story
OH! And one morning we were walking and found what I can only describe as a...hammock tree? Probably at around 7:00 and C? We were napping in the hammocks a bit, enjoying the warmth, and somebody came over and served us pancakes. That was _so_ cool.
OH OH! And spending one sunset roller skating at the BRC roller disco. And my skates didn't really fit, ha, but I wanted to skate with my friend so bad, so I did it anyway. A freaking ROLLER RINK! What?!?
God that was a beautiful week :-/ -- I really hope I can find a ticket to get back there this year.
Love this post!!!