If someone asked me what the most embarrassing moment of my life has been, I’d tell them it wasn’t a singular moment — it was an entire weeklong event. A festival of shame, if you will. It was the time my mom took me to Burning Man.
This upsetting situation occurred back in 2010. I was 15, about to be a junior in high school. For the most part, I still felt like a person on the outside looking in: My circle of friends was near non-existent, my self-confidence was low, and my undiagnosed depression was at an all-time high. I felt extremely isolated and misunderstood.
But, good news! Soon I wouldn’t be, because my mom asked me if I wanted to join her and my uncle at “The Burn” that summer. I was curious about the experience; surely I would have some sort of epiphany and would never feel sad or lonely ever again. Or so I thought.
Sign up for The Bold Italic newsletter to get the best of the Bay Area in your inbox every week.
As you can imagine, it takes a pretty eccentric family to allow their teenage daughter to go to a festival where most people are either naked or on drugs or both. Legally, I wasn’t even old enough to go to an R-rated movie. But my parents — who I love dearly — not only trusted me but taught me how to feel comfortable around people who were different from me. Growing up in Los Angeles, they brought all sorts of weirdos to our dinner table. In many ways, I like to think that it made me the person I am today. Aaside from teaching me valuable life lessons, my mom and dad basically taught me how to smoke weed.
Turns out, taking sponge baths in kiddie pools, wiping acidic dust off my crotch, and getting hit on by flat-earthers didn’t exactly cure my teenage depression
I’d been looking forward to Burning Man for months. Whenever my parents returned from the event in the past, they described the cosmic connections or emotional breakthroughs they’d processed there. I desperately wanted to experience some semblance of community, or, at the very least, a pivotal “a-ha” moment.
Turns out, taking sponge baths in kiddie pools, wiping acidic dust off my crotch, and getting hit on by flat-earthers didn’t exactly cure my teenage depression. I knew there was no going back when I groggily stepped off the RV at 7 a.m. and saw a group of naked cyclists glide past me, viscera flying in the wind.
My mom decided I should make a button that advertised my age like a disclaimer
Somehow, I felt even more out of place in this jarring environment than before — except now, instead of sitting in a high school classroom or nervously drinking Dos Equis at a kick-back, I was in a desert surrounded by thousands of hedonists who were just doing things without much reason or purpose. Stuff was definitely happening, but I didn’t know how I factored into it, especially since sex, drugs, and furry leg warmers didn’t appeal to me.
The atmosphere was messy and ecstatic, and I was neither.
People also assumed that I was of age, which led to unwanted sexual advances. At one point, a skinny bald guy in a floor-length leather duster tried to dance on me, and when my uncle caught wind of it, he knocked him over like it was a game of Jenga. Afterward, while I don’t actually remember wearing it, I recall my mom decided I should make a button that advertised my age like a disclaimer. I mean, I had only just had my very first kiss that summer, and suddenly I was getting cornered by a rejected extra from the Matrix Reloaded.
After a while, I began to notice how homogeneous the Burning Man community was. Everyone was wearing the same neon fur and tutus, the same face paint and the same fake bling. The men all smelled bad, and they all wanted to touch you. Free yourself by fucking me, their shirtless torsos seemed to say. Even though this festival valued self-expression, I thought it was ironic that everyone was so uniform, whether it was how they dressed or behaved.
The community also contradicted itself. Burning Man promotes “radical self-reliance,” and yet people like our neighbor, a shaggy, middle-aged man who told us he’d been born into extreme wealth, pathetically depended on us for basic necessities like food and clothing. Like a giant stray dog, he’d meander to our campsite and ask us for scraps. Another neighbor, who was basically the personification of leftover bong water, told me how she nearly drank herself to death and had to get airlifted to the hospital.
How could people be so reckless? I thought to myself as I smiled and nodded, dubstep blaring in the distance.
To be honest, though, a part of me enjoyed these interactions. I liked being perceived as an adult and having the luxury of anonymity. In my conservative school, my teachers berated me and my peers ignored me, so it was nice to be treated like a real person for once. But who that person was, I still didn’t know — and at that point, I doubted that I would find her here.
I started to cry: I got my first period in the weirdest place I could imagine.
There were other highlights, too. For instance, I loved going on early morning bike rides with my mom. We left at that magic hour when it was still cool out, and relatively quiet. We’d ride past larger-than-life metal sculptures and climb inside elaborate wooden temples. We got to explore a fantasy world that people built with their bare hands. It was beautiful, and I felt lucky.
Then, one morning, my bike ride took an unexpected turn. When we came back to our campsite, my shorts were soaked in blood — that was another thing I hadn’t experienced before. I knew what it was. But then my mind started to wander, and I thought, “but what if it’s not that?” Keep in mind, we were on ~The Playa,~ meaning we had no reception and the nearest hospital was two hours away. As I stood in the beige RV bathroom, I had nightmare visions of the onsite medical team trying to heal my broken body with amethysts, essential oils, and free hugs. I started to cry: I got my first period in the weirdest place I could imagine.
When I told my mom I what was going on, she just laughed, handed me a tampon, and told me that everything was going to be okay. Of course, this was just one of a million possible scenarios she had spent the whole year preparing for. After thanking her, I dried my eyes and got back on my bike to explore the playa alone. The rest of my experience was a pleasant, sand-colored blur. By the end of it, I was happy to go home. Even though I was “officially a woman” and this festival was supposed to be life-changing, I left it feeling no different.
Looking back on it now, it’s not fair for a teenager to judge the Burning Man experience. It’s all about letting go, and my life was only just beginning. I had no real responsibilities yet, no traumas to heal, no baggage to burn — and even if I did, I probably wouldn’t have done it by burning a 100-foot-tall effigy in the desert. I wasn’t as lost as I thought, either. Earlier that summer, I had spent a month living in San Francisco for a pre-college program, and felt pretty at home there. Ten years later, I can still say the same thing.
