Burning Man 28: Wait For It!

I'm going to try and convey one more really important item to you, before this is all over with. That item, naturally, will be told in the next installment, which will detail the actual Burning of the Man.

The problem is that there's a lot of background on me that you'll need to even come close to the revelatory climax of the story. Furthermore, I'm having to change the story a bit because of my earlier promise not to rat anyone out w/r/t drug use. Let's just say that there was a relative neophyte to hardcore hallucinogen abuse among us, and I'd been tinged with green all week, or ever since the Tuesday night incident with the butterfly girls, because his experiences with certain substances were much more fulfilling and fun than my initial encounters with those substances.

But that's for another story. Let's just say the first time I tried LSD, I made the paper.

Since that time, I've done my damndest to try every possible way of getting high or expanding consciousness, with the following exceptions:

1) I've never huffed gasoline or scotchgard. No one's ever been able to prove to me that these two substances offer anything unique in the way of either of the above. That, and I've always been able to procure other, more pleasant, things.

2) PCP and heroin just aren't readily available down here. Five or six years ago, I would have jumped right in, but now that I'm old and slow (and have a lot more to lose), well, I'll just call 'em misses. Can't do everything, you know?

But yes: I've done just about everything else you can imagine, most of it before BM 2000. I've done some things I'm not proud of, yes, but all in the name of being a well rounded substance abuser. And I'd narrowed the playing field quite a bit, even before 2000. I've done all the rolling, in other words, and now I'm just touching up the trimwork.

But none of that was at Burning Man, you see. It's like your first kiss--you can kiss different women (or men), you can kiss them in different places, and you can kiss them under the influences of many drugs. But you always remember your first time, and while you may have better or worse kisses (or acid-fueled rampages, to keep on topic), that first one is unique. Same goes for most other mind altering drugs, IMHO; hell, I remember the first time I ever smoked pot.

It made me a little jealous to hear this newbie talk about which drug he was likely to try that night, and what wonderful experiences he'd had the night before. To make matters worse, he was articulate about it, but by no means overly verbose. I could have handled someone prattling on endlessly about "the colors," but this guy was hip, and seemed to have himself well under control. So, while I was certainly good friends with him, I couldn't help but envy his whole situation.

To summarize: I've done a lot of drugs. A LOT of drugs. 99% of that is in my past now (and thankfully so), but I didn't feel like there was much left for me in the way of consciousness expansion.

Maybe I was approaching exhaustion. There comes a time when you're overloaded by input, and all the rest just slides off of you. There's a good chance that I had reached that point, and was even (wonder of wonders!) tired of tricking my mind into thinking something was new.

But I'm an idiot.