LA Weekly

photo by Charlie Evans

The ring of the bell is the first thing you hear once in range of the Burning Man Festival in bumfuck Nevada. Two of them, the size of logs, hang from poles at the front gate. The cars, RVs, trucks and buses crawl along the highway toward the entrance like ants to a watermelon. As you roll onto the dry lake bed on which the annual festival is held, the clangs get louder and louder. Finally, an arrival, and the source of the sound reveals itself: A sprite little angel giggles then strikes a bell. She's a virgin, so she must strike the bell. Then a shirtless dude with washboard abs swings like it's a pinata. He's a virgin, too.

The gatekeepers pound on the door and quiz the carloads: “Any virgins inside?” -- virgins being newbies to the festival, which last year drew nearly 40,000 wandering souls from all over the world. Last year a man dressed as a Victorian aristocrat handed me the hammer, instructed me in a very refined British accent to strike it as hard as I fucking could. Last year, I was new blood, and for a brief moment the whole of Black Rock City (the town that is Burning Man) knew that some new blood has arrived, new blood to perhaps carry the torch, new blood to perhaps ruin this for the rest of us, but new blood nonetheless. The gentleman ordered me to lay down in the playa dust and roll around. Then he spanked me.

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