20: Friday Night Freaks

Timing timing timing! Time is the fuel of every moment, but good timing, conincidence is the very essence of the human experience. Good timing is when experience and mind and moment coalesce into perfection. Good timing is the source of many love affairs. Of burglaries. Of disaster averted. Good timing is the sugar that sweetens the dull, tasteless repetition of everyday life. So many factors affect a moment of good timing. So many tiny choices on so many people's parts that lead to that instant when all the world falls into place. For some reason, in my life, there is a person out there who represents all of this to me, even though I don't really like the guy. In fact, he doesn't know my name. Has no idea he means a thing to me, and in many ways it's not even him, but he is the vehicle that reveals a certain aspect of the world that I find amazing and ridiculous and compelling. His name is Alan, and he was at Burning Man. The moment we discovered him was utter hilarity, but of course, he had no idea any of it was going on. He never does.

He used to live in the apartment beneath me. One weekend he rang the bell very late at night to ask us to turn the music down. We had no music playing. We told him to fuck off. That was the first time I met him. The next night he rang the bell again, this time just a bit after two a.m. He was frantic for beer and asked if there was any we could sell him. We sent him on his way, beerless. I can only assume he had only just moved in that weekend, because after that we heard from him on a weekly basis, usually to complain about how loud people were going up the stairs to our place. Then we'd have a party and he be happy as pie to drink our beer and smoke our weed. And the best part, thoughout all of this, every time I interacted with him, he'd say "Hi, I'm Alan," and I'd have to tell him that I knew that, we'd met before and then I'd tell him my name again. That is, until the fifth time and then I stopped talking to him altogether 'cause he was annoying and really weird and for fuck's sake, he could never remember mine or Lu's name. So fuck'em.

At the party a friend saw me talking to him asked, "You know Alan?"

"Not really," I replied. "He lives downstairs and he's kinda a pain in the ass."

"Yeah, I know him, or at least, I've seen him before. A bunch of times. He always at shows and he's always the most fucked up person there and he never remembers who anyone is."

And with that description, Alan was handed to me as this creature of the scene that I simply cannot shake. He's that way for a few of us and it's really rather totally bizarre. My friend Jack saw him on the highway once. At JazzFest deep in the night, he was the guy stumbling out of Tipatina's trying to get in on the cab with us. At the bluegrass fest in the park, Alan was the guy who set up right in front of us and spun danced through the day, stepping all over our shit and bumming our beers. At Phish shows we'd see him in the hands of security being led from the lawn. At shows around town he was the wide-eyed freak flailing all about.

So, when we'd finally made it all the way out to the DIS sign in the deep reaches of the playa and were grooving to the DJ tearing apart the Friday night madness and when I turned around from the group we'd traveled with out from Curvas Peligrosas, and there I turned dance spun twisted to the writhing beats and my eyes laid across the many freaks spazzing out at the edges of reason and there I turned and leapt and spun in the night dancing my ass off and there I turned and there I turned and saw him flailing. Alan in Black Rock City. The night was complete. I nearly collapsed in proxsyms of laughter as eyes-closed he shook and flailed and danced around and through and near us.

"G! Lu!" I shouted over the music. "G!!!" and then they looked at me. "Right behind!"

And they both turned, they both saw, and they both howled with laughter.

When Alan was there, I knew it was the right party for us. Where the night was brightest and tightest and true. Where we had timed it perfectly to find the only person we should, even though he'd never know he meant a thing to us. There he was, and so were we. It wasn't until much later that the deeper meanings of that moment became clear to me. Not until after I'd been lost and found again. Not until I saw what the other sign, across from DIS said. Not until I did all the math was ridiculous perfection of the banal universe revealed in full. But out there in the maniacal part of Friday night, seeing him was good enough to send us all up the scale of silliness, and we never even spoke to him once.

Getting out there was a million tiny choices. The choices go all the way back to the week before when we'd sat in a bar and a friend who wasn't even going convinced Lu and I that we should. Closer, though to the moment of discovering Alan on the playa, were the usual mayhem of leaving camping, forgetting things, going back, coming out again, waiting for someone to finish getting ready, hitting the bathroom clear and abundantly, not riding on the roller rink, once again, which left to take out in the glowspun flameblasted madness of the playa at night. There were factors to be equated.

Wags' bike was gone. She was riding a loaner that was in pretty sorry shape.

"Before we left this afternoon," she told me she thumped along next to me, "we fixed the flat. The front tire was flat so we put a new tube in and went out for a ride and we were all the way out on the playa when the back friggin tire blew out. So now we're out there and there's no way to fix it so we had to walk the whole way back and it really just sucked. It sucks not having my bike."

"Here," I said to her, stopping. She stopped, too. "Here, take mine. You can ride mine tonight and I'll ride yours and we'll just see how it goes."

"Really?"

"Totally. I really don't mind. Lu rode it this afternoon and it's a sweet friggin bike and it really really sucks that yours got stolen, you haven't complained about it at all, and I'm totally feeling great so it won't matter at all." I wasn't asking her. We switched. Her bike did suck. The back tire was toast, and not just the tube. The whole tire was fucked up, just torn and old, and there was truly nothing that could be done. But I just didn't care. I could still cruise, and I was happy that she had a break from the shitassness of theivery and bikelessness. But the torn tire was a factor, and it meant we were trying to not venture too far from home. Besides, we hadn't really explored the east side of the Black Rock at night so that's where we aimed. And we rolled large on Friday night.

Lu was decked in a silver dress, fishnets, black boots and goggles that put her firmly in the realm of cosmic playagirl. I was in the usual: Crocs, camo pants, gold shirt, cape and goggles. G and Wags were funkified, too, with a short skirt on her, a sweet shirt on G. N-Dawg rolled with us and wore a dark, furry vest and shorts. The best costumes, though, were the Car Wash Girls. It was E and Jess and the both of them covered in car-cleaning, poofy sponges. When you got between them, you got clean. On bikes they were hilarious. We cruised through the suburbs, taking in the sights and then found a dome we could dance in. Then from there another. And then another after that. Whereas on Thursday night we rode until our legs fell off, on Friday we punished ourselves with excessive dancing. All of it was loud techno. But the hit of E that Lu and I split was just enough to make us receptive to the monster beats and cascading trills, but not so much that we were fluttery and vapid and lost in the bliss. We enjoyed coherent euphoria.

"You know, I heard that Freak Nasty was playing out by the DIS sign tonight," Wags told us as we took a break between domes.

"Where's that?" I asked her.

"Out there," she replied, pointing into the darkness, off to the north and east, beyond The Man. "The only thing is, it's kinda far. Do you want to go all the way out there on that bike?"

I didn't even hesitate. "Let's do it! I'm totally fine riding this thing," and I was being honest. The playa dirt was soft, the rim I rode on was straight and true, and it would be worth it to get out there to boogie down. It was really the only thing we could do. At this distance the sign was just barely visible, but as we rode it grew brighterr, more ledgible and louder. We arrived at a rager, dumped our bikes and started to dance.

In large white lights, the word DIS was spelled out. Behind the ten foot tall letters, a stage was set up. On the stage was a DJ--Freak Nasty-- with his tables, his records, large speakers and swirling lights. We danced in the dust in front of that, hard. Off to one side was a lit box that you could stand and dance on. At one point a guy got up there and did some firedancing. At another point it was me and the Car Wash Girls. Another time found all the ladies up there getting down. And it was standing up there on the glowsquare when I first saw Alan frolic by.

I couldn't stand the guy! I didn't want to talk to him! I knew for sure he would have no idea who I was, where I came from, how we knew each other. But he was there. Of course he was there. Without even trying, a tiny piece of the large Burning Man puzzle was slipped into place. But it gets better still, although it requires a turn into meanness in no uncertain terms. All I can do here is report the facts, but I know that does not absolve me of the sins of mockery, of makefunery. These are the facts, but they just so happened to blow my mind.

A part of Alan's tale goes back years before me, and an important fact is that Alan is Asian. Steve, an old friend, had met Alan years ago. It was at a Phish show, Alan required help, he and friends stepped in to assist, but madness ensued and since then, my friend Steve has called Alan 'The Disoriental.' It's not nice but it is what it is. And on Friday night of Burning Man, me and my friends found Alan out behind the DIS sign, and it was not until we rode back later that night that I saw what the other sign was clear across the playa, the sign that was part of the art we'd just danced upon, that was of the same font, was in fact the rest of the word we had only half seen so far. That other word was ORIENT and when I read that, in laughter, I fell right off my bike. Of course we found him behind the sign that part of the word that was his ancient nickname. Of course he was there. I got a picture with him. He never saw us take the shot. It made it all complete somehow. In truth, it was a Burning Man Miracle.

We rode for the Fringe camp and live music taboot. Blvd was playing and I was adamant about hearing music made from instruments with skins and gutstrings and living, live grooves. The band was awesome. It was outdoors like all the other temporary venues and they owned the stage. But up and behind them was the whole big wide universe. The Man was behind us and we were in the front row with a seven foot chicken. Lu and I danced with him for a while as G and Wags jiggyfooted around bouncing on the chunky chords of the band before us. Hulahoops on the ground became zones of boogie. We chased each other around as the Car Wash Girls wandered, scrubbing. The fun made me hoot and shout as the music filtered through me fast and I moved smooth through the night.

At some point we went home. Eventually there was sleep. Before that Lu and I giggled in the dark of our tent that we'd found Alan out behind the Dis with Orient far the other way. Out of thirty five thousand we found the one. Our luck is endless is my final foolish thought before the nothing of sleep takes time from me.