Mojo - 22. Chapter 20: Burning Man (and Woman), Part Two

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Chapter 20: Burning Man (and Woman), Part Two

The following day, the relentless sun shone on me as I finally took a pic of the completed Burning Man. It was for my boy, and I sent it, along with a sad selfie and a poetic tweet in the form of a Cinquain.

“Who says

Loneliness is

About being alone;

In the brightest crowds, I miss you

...the most.”

The throngs of people were just as half-baked as ever, but now they felt an anticipatory vibe with bleary glances towards the Burning Man sacrifice supposed to go up in flames tomorrow night. All the efforts of the festival focused like the way light waves enter the eye from the temporary city itself; 70,000 lines of sight trained on this one retina of purpose.

As always, mobile entertainers wandered around on bicycles and stilts to keep community expectations high – pun intended, lol.

I sent Luca a text: “Where should I meet you?”

Glancing up, I got the goose-flesh feeling someone was watching me. I looked around; all the tie-dyed, hemp-wearing and smoking 20-somethings surrounding me seemed harmless enough—

My thought was cut off by Luca’s reply. “Inside main flap of the Love Yurt.”

I made my way to the sixty-foot round tent, which was right near the plaza facing the Wicker Man. Pausing, I glanced up at the rather non-telltale banner. Plain letters spelled out a vague “Big Tent of Human Kindness.”

A few people queued up in the sun, and just as I got to it, Luca popped out of the main flap.

He brushed his wavy, long hair behind his ears, smiling. “Training day, eh? Nervous?”

“Um—”

“Don’t worry. You’ll do fine, but I should warn you, you’re gonna see it all. Remember the orgy scenes from Logan’s Run? Well, the 70s ain’t got nothing on us!” He laughed, latching onto my shoulder and parading us into the little reception area. More people stood here waiting to be ‘fitted in,’ and Luca introed me to the receptionist. Her job was to ask a few interview questions to visitors, and based on the answers, hand over a color-coded card.

Fortunately, Luca had sent me an email cheat sheet, so I’d be able to reference it real-time on my phone, but, for example, a purple card with a number 3 on it meant the guests were interested in the opposite-sex fellatio section, and there were three in the party. If I saw room in that section, I was to direct them over to the purple-cushioned area.

In the yurt itself, Luca took me to the big crate near the center, and we stood on it together.

He was right; what a sight. One open space without a central pole, the sections were laid out like a pie chart: narrow walkways separated them, and clients’ shoes and clothes got kicked off and left here as they crowded onto air mattresses, each piled high with color-matched cushions, not to mention writhing and moaning clots of humanity.

After about 20 minutes of ‘traffic controlling’ together, I caught Luca adjusting a major boner.

“You okay alone, buddy? If so, I’ll go back to Skye for, um— Lunch.”

“You go, Luca. I got the hangdog of this.”

“Behave,” he joked and winked while getting down from the crate. I watched him exit and got on with placing folks in the right slots, after checking they had openings. It was pretty smooth, for just as often as new cards were held up near the front flap, satisfied visitors collected their belongings and wandered to the designated exit.

Nevertheless, the more and more I saw, heard and ‘felt’ the carefree happiness all around me, the more and more I wished for a ‘cure’ so I could win my Gordon back. But still, a part of me reflected on life in general: the sounds of sex, the tinge of pheromones on the roof of my mouth, the sea of wriggling, contented flesh – is this bliss? As much as I missed intimacy with my boy, it was the sharing and connection that made me pine the most. That was the real source of ecstasy….

Without any warning, the hair on the back of my neck stood up again. I traced the source towards the rear of the tent. Two figures appeared way out of place; they were not dressed right, much too old, causing disturbances as they crouched down and searched amongst the bodies, looking straight into faces.

My heart dropped and buckled my knees a bit. It was Angekwekwa and Guy Germaine.

‘Oh. Shit,’ I thought. I knew they were looking for me.

Making no abrupt movements, so I didn’t attract their attention, I lowered myself from the crate, and kept going until I was on my knees. I couldn’t use the main aisle because they’d see me for sure, so I was forced to crawl between the sweaty folks in the Red Section of the Human Kindness Tent, and trust me, you don’t want to know what these fine people were up to – no pun intended.

My hand slipped on a particularly slick spot, and instantly I was face to face with a bearded, truck-driver-looking fellow. A momentarily pissed-off grimace passed from him to his girl, and then they both reached up affectionately to pull me down into kisses. Stunned, I pecked each one on the forehead paternally, and rolled onto my side to dissuade the truck driver’s fingers from continuing to unbutton my jeans.

“Thanks very much,” I said as I clambered over the neighboring couple.

I craned my head up to see where the cock-crazies had gotten to, and saw they were closer than I thought. I hurried and slipped on another patch of lube, crashing right into a woman with long, strawberry hair.

Somehow, my gold chain got tangled and she screamed when I moved on. Her partner shouted “Watch it, dude!” and I glanced nervously to see Angekwekwa and Guy staring right at me.

“Oh, oh, oh…!” I leapt to my feet and started bouncing as I ran on the air mattresses.

“After him!” I heard the fake black lady yell.

Soon, I tripped, but stumbled past the waiting, traffic-control-less people at the front flap. I jogged out into the blinding sunlight.

Disorientated by all the noise, commotion and festivities of the crowds, I took off at full speed. I guess I intended to run back into the ‘city’ streets, but instead found myself in the wide-open plaza surrounding the Burning Man.

As I ran, I felt a breeze and zipped up my jeans again. While doing so, I ran headlong into a 5-person bicycle on parade with paper streamers; I sidestepped just in time, but the machine veered and spilled two hippies onto the sand.

They shouted at me, and bystanders got pissed at my running. As I dodged their hands, bobbing and weaving my shoulders into thin blades, I glanced back.

The Abraca cult loonies saw the ruckus-fracas and beet-lined it again in my direction.

I maneuvered a hard right, and started running against the flow of traffic, barely missing a moving pyramid of jugglers.

“Stop, thief!” Angekwekwa called out from behind, mainly to the crowd around me.

As I neared the base of the wicker man effigy, the amount of people was notably denser. They stood around, watching bongo players and little groups of high-as-kites dancing here and there. More performing artists moved in and out, slowing me down.

“Stop him!” Guy cried out, drawing unwanted attention to me as I looked for a way out. They weren’t far behind now.

Hippie hands, and mumbles of “Whoa, dude – chill” and “Stop harshing the mellow” surrounded me, raising panic within, and just then, as I cleared the last circle of people before the monument, Angekwekwa and Germaine burst through to tackle me.

Body-slammed about the waist amid gasps from the assembled, I stumbled backwards, hands reaching out blindly behind me.

I latched onto fabric and something wooden.

“Oh, oh, oh!” sounded, and I rotated my head just in time from the dust to see the fire-breather on stilts I’d knocked over begin to fall.

As if in slow motion, all of us stopped to watch – like helpless witnesses to Fate’s diabolical workings – as the man’s bottle of fuel and lit torch made a graceful arc straight into the tinder at Burning Man’s feet.

‘Oh. Shit….’ The figure caught, flames moving from feet to lick ankles, and then crawl up his calves on both sides.

Everyone was stationary. All sound had ceased. The gravity of what was happening was setting in. The crushing disappointment of 70,000 sunburned hippies deprived of their ‘big moment’ descended around us while their dream was going up in smoke, literally.

In the following instant, this stupor gelled into rage. Pissed-off, blood-shot eyes latched onto the three of us rising to our feet in the dust.

“It was them!” I pointed at the cock-crazies, and fortunately, a dozen witnesses or more agreed, having seen them tackle me.

The noose tightened around them, and I took off.

As I ran, I knew there would be hell to pay, and the loons would have to palomino up it for what they did to me.

˚˚˚˚˚

With an arm propped on the rolled-down window of the Sparks Deep-Fried Dog Wagon, I saw Burning Man tumble to his knees. His flames were dull and premature in the desert afternoon sun, but at least I was rolling out of Dodge unscathed.

I was in enough purgatory as it was….

_