“What do you mean this won’t be the only Tardis?” I argued. “I seriously doubt anybody else will be celebrating Doctor Who at Burning Man.”
My heated statement only earned me a slightly disapproving look, and a sarcastic pull of his mouth before his turned back to his computer. In retrospect, the expression may have been directed at the viking hat I wore, instead of the idiotic words tumbling out of my mouth.
I took another swig of my mojito and started again. Standing nearly naked in the living room at one am, while he sat at his desk, writing a check for water and electricity bill like a responsible adult.
“Don’t you think?” I pressed. “Besides, it can double as a shower. We can bathe inside of a Tardis. Isn’t that brilliant? Might even be bigger on the inside.” I wiggled my eyebrows for emphasis in a way that I positively don’t do when sober.
“If you want to fund it and build it, then that’s on you,” he said with a look that said he was clearly trying not to laugh.
“Then I’m doing it,” I declared. “The whole place is designed for you to live out a dream, isn’t it? So why not?”
“So your dream is to be au naturel in a telephone booth?” he replied, this time without looking up. “Well. That would explain a lot.”
“Don’t be a dick,” I said laughing. “I’m going to go as Frodo Baggins too. Cosplay. The night they burn everything down. If this is the craziest place on the planet, then I want to be at my happiest.”
“You know you’re weird, right?” he leaned back in his chair, folding his hands behind his head. A good-natured smirk crossed his face, his dark eyes crinkling in a way that somehow gave his biting remarks a dose of sweetness. It was everything I loved about him.
I set down my glass, removing my viking hat with an unnecessary flourish and arranged myself in his lap, tucking my drunken head under his chin. He held me, rubbing my back.
“Of course I’m weird,” I said. “Its the only reason you’re with me.”
I could feel the grin on his face, without looking up at him, and I grinned too. “We’re crazy for doing this,” I added. “For trekking out into the desert, and living for a week like dirty hippies.”
“It was your dream,” he murmured. “I’m just along for the ride.”
Which was true. I’d somehow managed to talk him into this, and to this day, I still don’t understand how I managed to do it.
But Burning Man had been on my bucket list before I even knew what a “bucket list” was. I stumbled across a video online of a woman hoola-hooping with a ring of fire at this gypsey looking camp, with people in strange attire, at night, many of them dressed in LED’s that glowed white hot under the delicate camera lense; and the music caught that wild streak in me, and beat to a curious rhythm that flowed in my veins. That was the first time I saw Burning Man, and it wasn’t until nearly ten years later that I finally put a name to that image, and that giddy feeling.
I was 14, growing up in a strict Southern Baptist household. We were a military family, moving across the country every couple years, and by this time it was hard for to connect to anyone, or anything aside from the fantasy novels I devoured. I tried describing the video to my mother, endeavoring to express way it made me feel happy and alive, and she instantly frowned. I was then grounded from Youtube. But not before I had shown my sister, who in an instant, felt the same way I had felt. Her eyes locked onto the screen, and I could see the goosebumps on her arms. We never spoke about that moment, but I knew then that we were different, far, far, different than our parents and our peers. We were untamed in our hearts, drawn to the bohemian lifestyle that was so condemned in our daily lives; the carefree movement of the beautiful black-haired woman, dancing with her fire-hoop, and the group of lost-boys who admired her in a strange desert landscape. It was the antithesis to the men in suits who stood on podiums and told us about our many and varied sins.
“Its an art festival,” my sister told me not long after. Secretly, we tried looking it up but never quite found where it was located, or when, or even how to get there. We just knew that something was out there, something that made us feel more alive than the summer Revival at church ever did.
By the time I was twenty-one, I was living on my own in California with a man that I adored. My sister remained in Texas with my parents, having just graduated high school, and I was doing everything I could to get her out of their suffocating, superstitious grasp. I’d already been disowned years before. Its a long story, but several things came to a head when I voted for Obama instead of McCain was told I could make my bed in the streets. It was about a year after that particular drawn out fight that I finished my associate’s degree, stayed out of arm’s reach from my parents who started making their angry accusations about my jezebel ways physical instead of just verbal. I’d had enough and packed up my car and drove to the west coast. I received phone calls for many weeks from my uncles, aunts, and pastors, saying that my soul was eternally damned and that I should reconsider my poor life decisions before Satan punished me.
(Right, because a good life choice was to stay at home with people who had visions, spoke in tongues, and threw out my clothes and books, twisted my arms, or slammed me into the fridge just for saying “I’m going out with friends tonight,” ….“I auditioned for a theatre show,” ...or, my personal favorite, “I think I’m going to major in anthropology.” )
But I digress.
So I was living in California with with Bill, a dark-eyed, sharp-tongued, curly-headed man, and my life went from living in fear and heartache to waking up each day with a smile on my face: the first time in my life that has ever happened.
It was in this bliss that I was surfing youtube one afternoon, and found the video again of the woman and the fire hoop. I started finding more videos, and I dug for hours until I found the name of it all.
Burning Man.
A whole city constructed in the Black Rock desert in Nevada, for one week at the end of August. It was an event where participants dedicated themselves to gritty self-reliance, (bringing whatever they would need to survive in the harsh condition); Art, (transporting installations, music, laser shows, costumes, whatever); and true, honest-to-god self-expression. The photos of naked people painting themselves in blue paint and frolicking across the cracked desert floor made me chuckle at their zaniness; and it made me hunger for that kind of ultimate freedom, free from judging eyes.
My head was buzzing, and adrenaline flooded my veins. My fingers tapped the keyboard in a blur of strokes, looking for more new and profound information.
And that’s when I found the ticket page.
I called my sister.
“Hey,” she said, sounding groggy.
“You hungover?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she croaked. “Mom thinks I’m sick. What do you want, man?”
Since I was about 18 and she was 15, we had this unspoken agreement to cover for each other when we dabbled in drinking and drugs. I’d come home from a party reeling from tequila shots, and she’d usher me into bed, pretending to have a loud conversation about recent video games, shoving cups of water into my hands to save me from a hangover. Then, a few months later, she’d show up with her friends, accidentally bursting into the living room when she thought our parents were gone, rolling on ecstasy. I’d jump up and get her group into her room, even care for them if they had to throw up. I baked them french toast when they were high and starving from munchies. We truly weren’t bad kids. We were just very sheltered, had very few friends, and no family to connect to. It was a bad recipe for small acts of rebellion.
That being said, she was always the wilder one, of us two.
But now that I was gone, she didn’t have anyone to cover for her. I felt a familiar twinge of guilt about leaving her alone with them, afraid they would hurt her as badly as they had hurt me. I felt powerless.
“Bro, I’m sorry,” I murmured. “Don’t forget. Water. But, uh, hey. Do you remember that video of the fire-hoola-hoop dancer?” I asked.
The other side went quiet. “Yeah,” she said at last, sounding confused and perhaps suspicious. “Yeah… I do. That was a long time ago.”
“It was,” I agreed. “But listen. I found it. We’re going. Tickets go on sale in two months. I’m paying for everything.”
“Seriously?” she said.
“Seriously,” I said.
I could visualize her mischievous grin so hard, I mirrored it on my face. “We’ll talk about flights in a bit. Just… get your ass out of that house and come see California. I’ll take care of everything. Going to send you an email tonight with everything I’ve found. You were right. It is an art festival.”
“What do I tell them if it comes up?” she asked after a moment.
“Camping trip,” I said with a shrug. “Its not a lie. We’re going to be living in a tent for a week in the desert.”
“I doubt that will really work, but ok,” she said with a laugh. “Are there really gypsies out there?”
“Bro,” I said very seriously. “Everyone is a gypsy out there.”
It was heaven.
We’d found the gates.
We were achieving a dream.
I threw my arms around my dark-eyed man and whispered the dirty things I could do to him if I built my Tardis in the desert.
“You’re so bad when you’re drunk,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m not complaining, merely stating an observation.”
“It just seems bad because you found me when I was still a saint,” I said, leaning back to look into his face, referring to the fact that we’d met when I was still trying to meet my parent’s expectations; when I still attended church every sunday; when I still believed in angels and demons and keeping myself pure and untainted for marriage. When I was still playing for the home team, and condemned drinking, and dancing, and playing cards, like every other good Southern Baptist.
My, my, how times had flown.
I pulled up my viking hat from the floor and settled on my head at a cocky angle. “We have forty one days until we make our pilgrimage to crazy-town,” I said, with a slight nervous curl at my lips, biting the bottom one.
“I know,” he said, shaking his head, still holding me in his lap. “We still have so much to organize. And here you are, trying to throw an extra project into the mix.”
“We need a shower out there,” I argued. “This shit is important.”
Bill laughed. “I know we’ll pull everything together. We always do.” He smiled tiredly, and I suddenly became aware of how late the night had grown. “I love you,” he added with a yawn, closing his eyes.
“I love you too,” I said, planting a series of kisses on his forehead, nose, and mouth.
When he didn’t directly respond, already fast asleep, I got up and threw on some clothes and went outside to slip his check into the mail deposit box, still wearing my viking hat. The summer night was cool on my skin, and as I walked back along the apartment complex sidewalk, I smiled to myself.
The gates of heaven were not far now, and one way or another, I was bringing a Tardis. The thought made me laugh.
